BR  85  .C49  1914 

Church,  Richard  William, 

1815-1890. 
Christianity  and 

civilisation 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  CIVILISATION 


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THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


CHRISTIANITY  AND 
CIVILISATION 


FIVE    LECTURES    DELIVERED    AT 

ST.    PAULS   CATHEDRAL 

LONDON 


BY 
The  late  R.  W.  CHURCH,  M.A.,  D.C.L. 

DEAN   OF  PAUL'S,   HONORARY   FELLOW   OF  ORIEL 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1914 

All  rights  reserved 


All  rights  reserved 


CONTENTS 


TWO  LECTURES  ON 
CIVILISATION  BEFORE  AND  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY 

I.     Roman  Civilisation -        1 

11.     Civilisation  after  Christianity        ....      23 


THREE  LECTURES  ON 

SOME  INFLUENCES   OF  CHRISTIANITY  UPON 

NATIONAL   CHARACTER 

I.     Influence  of  Christianity  on  National  Character      49 

II.     Christianity  and  the  Latin  Races  ....       80 

III.     Christianity  and  the  Teutonic  Races      .         .        .     113 


CIVILISATION 
BEFORE  AND   AFTER   CHRISTIANITY 


TWO   LECTURES 
DELIVERED  m  ST.  PAUL'S  CATHEDRAL 

AT    THE 

TUESDAY  EVENING  SERVICES 

January  23rd  and  30th,   1872 


LECTUEE    I 

ROMAN   CIVILISATIOIT 

I  PROPOSE  to  bring  before  your  thoughts,  in  fulfilment 
of  my  part  in  this  series  of  lectures,  the  subject  of 
Civilisation — first,  as  it  was,  in  probably  its  highest 
form  before  Christian  times,  in  the  Eoman  State ;  and 
next,  as  it  has  been  since  Christianity  has  influenced 
the  course  of  history  and  the  conditions  of  human  life. 
In  doing  this,  I  have  to  remember  several  things.  I 
have  to  remember  the  vastness  of  the  field  before  us, 
the  huge  mass  of  materials,  the  number,  difficulty,  and 
importance  of  the  questions  which  arise  out  of  the 
subject,  or  hang  on  it.  I  have  to  remember  that 
civilisation  is  a  thing  of  more  or  less,  and  that 
general  statements  about  it  are  ever  Hable  to  be  mis- 
understood or  excepted  to,  because  the  speaker  is 
thinking  of  one  phase  or  degree  of  it,  and  the  listener 
and  critic  is  thinking  of  another.  One  may  have  his 
thoughts  full  of  its  triumphs,  and  the  other  of  its 
failures  and  shameful  blots.  I  have  to  remember  that 
it  is  a  subject  which  has  tasked  the  powers  and  filled 


2  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  i 

the  volumes  of  learned,  able,  and  copious  writers — 
Montesquieu,  Guizot,  Buckle,  to  name  only  these,  who 
have  made  it  their  special  theme — and  that  they  have 
left  much  unsaid,  much  unsettled,  about  it.  And  I 
have  to  remember  that  I  have  only  two  short  lectures 
— circumstances  have  made  this  necessary  —  to  say 
what  I  can  say  about  it.  Perhaps  for  what  I  have  to 
say  it  is  enough.  But,  with  such  a  subject,  I  should 
gladly  have  had  more  time  both  for  preparation  and 
for  discourse. 

We  who  pursue  our  business  in  this  great  city,  we 
who  come  to  hear  or  to  worship  in  this  great  cathedral, 
have  continually  before  our  eyes,  in  some  of  its  most 
striking  and  characteristic  forms,  a  very  complex  but 
very  distinctive  fact  in  the  conditions  of  human  exist- 
ence— the  vast  complex  fact  to  which  we  give  the 
name  of  civilisation.  It  is,  we  all  know,  a  vague  and 
elastic  word,  and  I  am  not  going  to  be  so  venturous  as 
here  to  analyse  it  and  define  even  its  outlines ;  but  it 
expresses  a  substantial  idea,  it  marks  a  real  difference 
in  what  men  are  and  can  be ;  and  if  loose  and  idle 
thinkers  throw  it  about  as  if  it  was  a  ghttering 
counter,  it  is  so  real,  and  so  important  in  its  meaning, 
that  the  most  accurate  ones  cannot  dispense  with  the 
use  of  it.  The  distinction  between  man  in  the 
barbarian  state,  and  man  in  the  state  of  civil  life 
and  civil  society,  is  no  imaginary  one,  though  civilised 
life  may  be  penetrated  and  disgraced  with  elements  of 
barbarism,  and  gleams  of  civilisation  may  be  discerned 


I  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  3 

far  back  in  times  which  are  rightly  called  barbarous. 
A  cloudy  sky  and  a  bright  sky  are  different  things, 
though  one  may  be  brightening  and  the  other  darken- 
ing, into  its  opposite  ;  though  there  may  be  uncertainty 
about  their  confines  ;  though  clouds  may  be  prominent 
in  the  clear,  and  though  there  be  light  breaking 
through  the  dulness  and  gloom.  Civilisation  is  a 
sufficiently  definite  and  a  sufficiently  interesting  thing 
to  speak  about,  even  though  we  find,  as  we  must  if 
we  think  at  all,  how  much  of  the  subject  eludes  our 
grasp,  and  how  idle  it  is,  on  an  occasion  like  the  pre- 
sent, to  attempt  to  work  upon  it,  except  in  the  way  of 
rough  and  imperfect  sketching. 

I  include  under  the  word  Civilisation  all  that  man 
does,  all  that  he  discovers,  all  that  he  becomes,  to  fit 
himself  most  suitably  for  the  life  in  which  he  finds 
himself  here.  It  is  obviously  possible,  for  the  fact 
stares  us  in  the  face,  now  as  at  all  times,  that  this 
moral  being,  endowed  with  conscience  and  yearning 
after  good,  whom  we  believe  to  be  here  only  in  an 
early  and  most  imperfect  stage  of  his  existence,  may 
yet  live,  and  feel,  and  act,  as  if  all  that  he  was  made 
for  was  completed  here.  He  may  also,  with  the  full 
assurance  of  immortality,  yet  see,  in  this  present  state, 
a  scene  and  stage  of  real  life,  in  which  that  life  is 
intended  to  be  developed  to  the  full  perfection  of 
which  it  is  capable ; — a  scene,  intended,  though  tem- 
porary only,  and  only  a  training  place,  to  call  forth 
his  serious  and  unsparing  efforts  after  improvement ; 


4  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  I 

just  as  at  a  school,  in  playtime  as  well  as  in  work,  we 
expect   as  mucli  thought,  as  much  purpose,  as  much 
effort,   proportionate    of    course    to    the  time,  as   we 
expect  in  grown-up  life.     There  is,  I  need  not  say,  a 
further    question — whether  this  life   can  become   all 
that  it  is  capable  of  becoming,  without  reference  to 
something  beyond  and  above  it :  that,  of  course,  is  the 
question  of  questions  of  all  ages,  and  emphatically  of 
our  own.     But  into  that  I  am  not  now  entering.     All 
that  I  want  to  insist  upon,  is   that  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  making  this  present  Kfe  as  perfect  as  it  can 
be  made   for  its   own   sake ;  improving,  inventing,  ad- 
justing,   correcting,    strictly     examining    into    detail, 
sowing    seeds    and    launching  deeply  -  laid   plans   of 
policy,   facing  the  present   and    realising   the   future, 
for  the  sake  of  what  happens  and  must  happen  in  time, 
under  the  known  conditions   of  our  experience  here. 
To  all  such  attempts  to  raise  the  level  of  human  life, 
to  all  such  endeavours  to  expand  human  capacity  and 
elevate  human  character,  to  all  that  has  in  view  the 
bettering  of  our  social  conditions,  in  all  the  manifold 
forms  and  diversified  relations  of  the  society  in  which 
we  grow  up  and  live,  till  our  senses  come  to  an  end 
in  death ;  to  all  that  in  the  sphere,  which  is  bounded 
to  our  eyes  by  the  grave,   tends  to  make  life  more 
beautiful,  more  reasonable,  more  pure,  more  rich  both 
in  achievement   and   felicity,   up   to   the  point  when 
pain,  and  sorrow,  and  death  claim  their  dread  rights 
over  it,  and   that   even   in  the  presence  of  pain  and 


X  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  ^ 

death,  imparts  to  life  dignity,  self-command,  nobleness 
— to  all  this  I  should  give  the  name  of  civilisation. 

I  do  not,  therefore,  take  civilisation  to  consist  in 
the  mere  development,  and  extension,  and  perfection, 
either  of  the  intellectual  faculties,  or  of  the  arts  which 
minister  to  the  uses  and  conveniences,  or  even  the 
embellishment  of  life.  The  intellectual  faculties,  some 
of  them  at  least,  may  be  strong  and  keen  in  what  I 
should  still  call  a  low  stage  of  civilisation,  as  hitherto 
in  India.  I  cannot  call  the  stage  to  which  man  has 
reached  in  Egypt,  in  China,  or  Japan,  a  high  one, 
though  there  he  has  been  singularly  ingenious,  singu- 
larly industrious,  and  in  many  ways  eminently 
successful  in  bringing  nature  under  his  control.  The 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  in  Italy  were  bril- 
liant centuries ;  they  witnessed  a  burst  of  genius  in 
art  which  was  absolutely  without  its  match.  It  was 
civilisation,  I  cannot  deny  it.  But  I  cannot  call  that 
other  than  a  corrupt  and  base  one,  of  which  the 
theory  was  expounded,  with  infinite  ability,  by 
Machiavelli,  and  the  history  told  by  Guicciardini. 
I  do  not  call  it  a  true  civilisation,  where  men  do  not 
attempt  to  discharge  their  duties  as  men  in  society. 
Not  even  the  presence  of  Leonardo,  Michel  Angelo, 
and  Eaffaelle  can  persuade  me  to  rank  it  high,  as 
a  form  of  civilisation,  in  which  life,  amid  aU  its 
splendours,  was  so  precarious  and  so  misguided,  in 
which  all  the  relations  and  rights  of  society  were  so 
frightfully    confused,    and    in   which    the    powers    of 


6  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  I 

government  were  systematically  carried  on  by  un- 
limited perfidy,  by  the  poison  bowl  and  the  dagger. 
I  should  not  consent  to  call  the  railway,  or  the  tele- 
graph, or  even  the  newspaper  of  our  own  age,  a  final 
test  of  civilisation,  till  I  knew  better  how  the  facilities 
of  intercourse  were  employed,  —  what  was  flashed 
along  the  wires  or  written  in  the  columns ;  nor,  again, 
the  wonderful  and  intricate  machinery  of  our  manu- 
factures and  trade,  till  I  knew  how  the  wealth  pro- 
duced by  it  was  used.  Civilisation,  the  form,  as 
perfect  as  man  can  make  it,  of  his  life  here,  needs 
these  appliances,  welcomes  them,  multiplies  them; 
man  needs  all  the  powers  that  he  can  get  for  help, 
for  remedy,  for  the  elevation  of  his  state.  But  the 
true  subject  of  civilisation  is  the  man  himself,  and 
not  the  circumstances,  the  instruments,  the  inventions 
round  him.  "A  man's  life  consisteth  not  in  the 
abundance  of  the  things  which  he  possesseth."  The 
degree  of  civilisation  in  a  society,  high  or  low,  rising 
or  going  back,  depends,  it  seems  to  me,  on  the  actual 
facts  of  civil  life,  political,  social,  domestic,  not  on 
the  machinery  of  outward  things  of  which  men  can 
dispose ;  on  what  men  try  to  be  one  to  another ;  on 
what  they  try  to  make  of  themselves,  not  of  their 
goods  and  powers ;  on  the  words  which  they  speak, 
really  speak  from  their  hearts,  not  imitate  or  feign ; 
on  the  indications  of  will  and  purpoce,  of  habits  of 
life,  of  self-government  or  indulgence — in  a  word,  of 
character.     The  degree  of  civilisation  depends  a  great 


I  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  7 

deal  more  on  whether  they  are  manly,  honest,  just, 
public-spirited,  generous,  able  to  work  together  in  life, 
than  on  whether  they  are  rich,  or  hard-working,  or 
cunning  of  hand,  or  subtle  of  thought,  or  delicate  of 
taste,  or  keen  searchers  into  nature  and  discoverers  of 
its  secrets.  All  these  things  are  sure  to  belong  to 
civilisation  as  it  advances ;  and  as  it  advances  it  needs 
them,  and  can  turn  them  to  account,  more  and  more. 
All  I  say  is,  that  they  are  not  civilisation  itself,  as  I 
understand  it. 

Our  own  civilisation,  it  is  not  denied,  has  been 
greatly  influenced  by  religion,  and  by  the  Christian 
religion ;  by  the  close  connection  of  this  present  life 
with  a  life  beyond  it,  and  by  what  Christianity  teaches 
of  our  relations  to  the  unseen.  But  civil  life  of  a 
high  character  has  undoubtedly  existed,  at  any  rate 
for  a  time,  without  such  connection.  I  will  venture 
this  evening  to  put  before  you  the  hasty  sketch  of 
such  a  civilisation,  and  follow  it  to  its  fate. 

In  the  ancient  world,  as  we  call  it,  two  great 
forms  of  civilisation  appear,  with  which  we  must 
always  have  the  liveliest  sympathy.  They  have 
deeply  influenced  our  own :  and  we  must  become 
quite  other  men  from  what  we  are  when  we  forget 
them.  The  civilisation  of  Greece,  with  Athens  for 
its  standard,  and  in  a  main  degree  its  source,  still 
lives  in  our  civil  and  political,  as  well  as  in  our 
intellectual  life.  The  great  idea  of  citizenship,  with 
all  that  flows  from  it  of  duty  and  ennobling  service 


8  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  i 

and  cherished  ties,  found  there  its  clear  and  complete 
expression  in  real  fact  and  spontaneous  action,  before 
it  was  portrayed  and  analysed  by  writers  of  extra- 
ordinary force  and  subtlety,  and  of  matchless  elo- 
quence, who  are  our  masters  still.  But  the  civilisation 
of  Athens,  though  not  too  precocious  for  its  place  in 
the  world's  history,  was  too  precocious  for  its  own 
chance  of  life.  On  that  little  stage,  and  surrounded 
by  the  ambitions  and  fierce  energies  of  a  world  of 
conquest, — in  its  first  moment  of  weakness  and  mis- 
take, it  was  oppressed  and  crushed.  It  lasted  long 
enough  to  plant  a  new  conception  of  human  society 
among  men,  to  disengage  and  start  upon  its  road  a 
new  and  inextinguishable  power,  destined  to  pursue 
its  way  with  the  most  momentous  results,  through 
all  the  times  to  come.  It  did  not  last  long  enough 
to  work  out  in  any  proportionate  way  a  history  for 
itself. 

It  is  to  civilisation  as  exhibited  in  the  Eoman 
State  that  I  invite  your  attention.  There  you  have 
the  power  of  growth,  of  change,  and  yet  of  stability 
and  persistent  endurance.  There  you  have  an  ideal 
of  social  and  civil  life,  a  complex  and  not  always  a 
consistent  one,  yet  in  its  central  elements  very  strongly 
defined ;  keeping  its  hold  on  a  great  people  with 
singular  tenacity  through  the  centuries,  amid  aU  their 
varying  fortunes ;  undergoing  great  transformations 
in  the  vicissitudes  of  good  and  evil  days,  yet  at  the 
bottom  unchanged,  and  frequently  reasserting  its  un- 


I  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  9 

impaired  vitality  at  moments  when  we  least  expect  it. 
It  grew  to  impress  itself  on  mankind  as  the  power 
which  had  a  unique  right  to  command  their  obedience 
and  to  order  their  affairs ;  it  made  its  possessors,  and 
it  made  the  nations  round,  feel  that  Eomans  were,  in 
a  very  real  sense,  the  "  Lords  of  the  human  race." 
To  our  eyes,  as  we  look  back  upon  it,  it  represents, 
as  nothing  else  does,  the  civilisation  of  the  then 
world. 

'Why  does  it  deserve  this  character  ?  What  in  it 
specially  has  a  claim  on  our  interest  ?  The  Eomans, 
we  know,  left  their  mark  on  the  world  ;  much  of  what 
they  did  is  still  with  us,  defying  all  our  centuries  of 
change.  We  live  in  the  cities  which  they  founded : 
here,  at  St.  Paul's,  one  of  their  great  roads  runs  past 
our  doors.  But  I  do  not  dwell  on  Eoman  civilisation, 
because  they  were  builders  who  built  as  if  with  the 
infinite  idea  of  the  future  before  them ;  because  they 
covered  the  face  of  the  earth  with  famous  and  endur- 
ing cities ;  because  their  engineers  excavated  harbours, 
drained  marshes,  and  brought  the  waters  of  the  hills 
along  miles  of  stupendous  aqueducts ;  because  they 
bound  together  their  empire  with  a  network  of  roads 
and  postal  services ;  because  they  were  the  masters 
of  organised  and  scientific  war;  because  they  were 
great  colonial  administrators,  subduing  the  earth,  to 
subdue  its  rudeness,  and  plant  in  it  the  arts  of  life. 
Not  for  all  this ;  but  because,  in  spite  of  the  crimes, 
which  come  back  to  our  minds  when  we  name  the 


lo  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  i 

Eomans,  they  were  yet  keenly  aKve  to  what  men,  as 
men,  ought  to  be, — men,  as  men,  not  for  what  they 
had,  but  for  what  they  were — not  as  rich,  or  clever, 
or  high  in  dignity,  or  even  as  wielding  power,  but  as 
citizens  of  a  great  commonwealth  and  city,  the  Mother 
and  Lady  of  them  all.  Not  because  they  possessed  in 
large  measure  the  arts  and  the  expedients  by  which 
the  social  machine  is  made  to  move  more  easily,  much 
less  for  the  pride  and  sensuality  which  squandered 
these  arts  in  ostentation  and  fabulous  luxury ;  but 
because,  amid  aU  the  dark  tragedies  which  fill  their 
history,  in  spite  of  the  matchless  perfidy  and  the 
matchless  cruelty  which  contradicted  their  own  ideals, 
and  seem  to  silence  us  when  we  talk  of  Eoman  virtue, 
it  is  yet  true  that  deep  in  the  minds  of  the  most 
faithless,  the  most  selfish,  the  most  ruthless,  was  the 
knowledge  that  justice  and  public  spirit  were  things 
to  which  a  Eoman,  by  the  nobility  of  his  birth,  was 
obliged ;  because  the  traditional,  accepted  popular 
morality  of  Eome  placed  among  its  first  articles, 
however  they  were  violated  in  practice,  that  fortitude, 
honesty,  devotion,  energy  in  service,  were  essential 
things  in  a  society  of  men ;  because  popular  opinion, 
loose  as  the  term  may  be,  had  the  sentiment  of 
honour,  and  owned  the  bond  of  duty,  even  to  death ; 
because  Eomans  recognised  a  serious  use  of  life,  in 
doing,  and  doing  for  the  common  weal — not  merely 
in  learning,  or  acquiring,  or  enjoying  for  themselves 
alone. 


I  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  u 

Now,  immediately  that  I  have  said  all  this,  the 
picture  of  Eoman  history  rises  up  before  our  thoughts, 
as  it  is  painted  in  Gibbon,  or  Milman,  or  Merivale. 
We  remember  the  hard  and  rapacious  times  of  the 
Eepublic,  with  their  resolute  and  unflinching  vindic- 
tiveness,  their  insolent  affectations  and  hypocrisies  of 
moderation  and  right.  We  are  met  by  the  enormous 
corruption  and  monstrous  profligacy  of  the  statesmen 
of  the  age  of  transition ;  and  under  the  Empire  we 
find  a  system  fruitful,  normally  fruitful,  of  a  succes- 
sion of  beings,  the  most  degraded,  the  most  detestable, 
the  most  horrible,  of  all  that  ever  bore  the  name  of 
man.  Is  it  worth  while  to  talk  in  Christian  days  of 
a  civiHsation  with  such  fruits  as  these  ? 

I  venture  to  submit  that  it  is — that  the  subject  is 
most  interesting  and  instructive,  and  that  it  is  our 
own  fault  if,  in  spite  of  the  evil,  we  are  not  taught 
and  braced  by  so  much  that  is  strong  and  so  much 
that  is  noble.  We  pass  backwards  and  forwards  from 
admiration  to  horror  and  disgust  as  we  read  the  story 
in  Gibbon,  who,  in  his  taste  for  majesty  and  pomp,  his 
moral  unscrupulousness,  and  his  scepticism,  reflected 
the  genius  of  the  Empire  of  which  he  recounted  the 
fortunes ;  but  who  in  his  genuine  admiration  of  public 
spirit  and  duty,  and  in  his  general  inclination  to  be 
just  to  all,  except  only  to  the  Christian  name,  reflects 
another  and  better  side  of  Eoman  character.  For 
there  was  this  better  side.  Eoman  civilisation  pro- 
duced not  only  great  men,  but  good  men  of  high  stamp 


12  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  i 

and  mark ;  men  with  great  and  high  views  of  human 
life  and  human  responsibility, — with  a  high  standard 
of  what  men  ought  to  aim  at,  with  a  high  belief  of 
what  they  could  do.  And  it  not  only  produced  indi- 
viduals; it  produced  a  strong  and  permanent  force  of 
sentiment;  it  produced  a  character  shared  very  un- 
equally among  the  people,  but  powerful  enough  to 
determine  the  course  of  history,  in  the  way  which 
suited  it.  I  think  it  may  be  said  with  truth  that  the 
high  ideal  of  Eoman  civilisation  explains  its  final  and 
complete  collapse.  A  people  with  a  high  standard, 
acted  on  by  the  best,  recognised  by  all,  cannot  be 
untrue  to  the  standard  with  impunity;  it  not  only 
falls,  but  falls  to  a  depth  proportionate  to  the  height 
which  it  once  was  seeking ;  it  is  stricken  with  the 
penalty  which  follows  on  hollow  words  and  untrue 
feelings, — on  the  desertion  of  light  and  a  high  pur- 
pose, on  the  contradiction  between  law  and  life.  A 
civilisation  like  that  of  China,  undisturbed  by  romantic 
views  of  man's  nature,  and  content  with  a  low  estimate 
of  his  life,  may  flow  on,  like  one  of  its  great  rivers, 
steady,  powerful,  useful ;  unchanged  for  centuries,  and 
unagitated  by  that  which,  more  than  wars  and  ambi- 
tion, is  the  breaker  up  of  societies, — the  power  of  new 
ideas,  of  new  hopes  and  aims.  But  because  Eoman 
civilisation  became  false  to  its  principles,  there  was  no 
reversing  its  doom. 

The  reason  why  I  put  Eoman  civilisation  so  high 
and  in  so  unique  a  place  is,  that  it  grew  out  of  and 


I  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  13 

cherished,  age  after  age,  with  singular  distinctiveness 
and  tenacity,  two  great  principles.  One  of  these  was 
that  the  work  of  the  community  should  be  governed 
by  law ;  the  other,  that  public  interest  and  public 
claims  were  paramount  to  all  others. 

Where  you  have  in  a  society  a  strong  and  lasting 
tendency  to  bring  public  and  private  affairs  under  the 
control  of  fixed  general  rules,  to  which  individual 
wills  are  expected  and  are  trained  to  submit ;  where 
these  rules  are  found  to  be  grounded,  instinctively 
perhaps  at  first,  methodically  afterwards,  on  definite 
principles  of  right,  fitness,  and  sound  reason ;  where 
a  people's  habitual  impulse  and  natural  disposition  is 
to  believe  in  laws,  and  to  trust  them,  and  it  is 
accepted  as  the  part  of  common  sense,  duty,  and 
honour  to  obey  them, — where  these  characteristics,  of 
respect  for  law  as  an  authority,  of  resort  to  it  as  an 
expedient  and  remedy,  are  found  to  follow  the  progress 
of  a  great  national  history  even  from  its  beginnings, 
it  cannot  be  denied  that  there  you  have  an  essential 
feitture  of  high  civilisation.  They,  of  whom  this  may 
be  said,  have  seen  truly,  in  one  most  important  point, 
how  to  order  human  life.  And  Law,  in  that  sense  in 
which  we  know  it,  and  are  living  under  it,  in  its 
strength,  in  its  majesty,  in  its  stability,  in  its  practical, 
businesslike  character,  may,  I  suppose,  be  said  to  have 
been  born  at  Eome.  And  it  was  born  very  early; 
very  different,  of  course,  in  its  rude  beginnings,  from 
what  it  grew  to  be  afterwards,  but  showing,  from  the 


14  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  1 

first,  the  serious,  resolute  struggles  of  the  community 
to  escape  from  the  mischiefs  of  self-will  and  random 
living,  without  understood  order  and  accepted  rules. 
The  political  conflicts  of  which  Eoman  history  is  full, 
centred,  in  its  best  days  at  least,  round  laws :  they 
assumed  a  state  of  law,  they  attempted  to  change  it; 
the  residt,  if  result  there  was,  was  expressed  in  a  law ; 
violent  and  extreme  measures  might  be  resorted  to, 
and  not  seldom,  in  those  fierce  days,  something  worse ; 
but  it  was  presupposed  by  public  opinion,  whatever 
violent  men  might  dare,  that  law  was  to  continue 
and  to  be  obeyed,  till  it  was  changed,  and  that  it 
would  only  be  changed  by  lawful  authority  and  by 
lawful  processes.  Eoman  law  was  no  collection  of  a 
certain  number  of  vague  constitutional  articles ;  it 
was  no  cast-iron  code  of  unchanging  rules ;  but  it 
was  a  real,  living,  expansive  system,  developing 
vigorously  as  the  nation  grew,  coextensive  with  the 
nation's  wants  in  its  range  and  applicability,  search- 
ing and  self-enforcing  in  its  work,  a  system  which 
the  people  used  and  relied  upon  in  their  private  as 
much  as  in  their  public  affairs.  And  so  grew  up, 
slowly  and  naturally,  through  many  centuries,  in  the 
way  familiar  to  us  in  our  law,  the  imposing  and 
elaborate  system  of  scientific  jurisprudence,  which  the 
Eomans,  when  they  passed  away,  bequeathed  to  the 
coming  world ;  the  great  collections  of  Theodosius  and 
Justinian,  in  which  are  gathered  the  experiences  of 
many  ages  of  Eoman  society,  played  upon,  illuminated. 


I  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  15 

analysed,  arranged,  by  a  succession  of  judicial  intellects 
of  vast  power  and  consummate  accomplishment ;  that 
as  yet  unequalled  monument  of  legal  learning,  compre- 
hensive method,  and  fruitfulness  in  practical  utility, 
which,  under  the  name  of  Civil  Law,  has  been  the 
great  example  to  the  world  of  what  law  may  be, 
which  has  governed  the  jurisprudence  of  great  part  of 
Europe,  which  has  influenced  in  no  slight  degree  our 
own  jealous  and  hostile  English  traditions,  and  will 
probably  influence  them  still  more.  "The  education 
of  the  world  in  the  principles  of  a  sound  jurispru- 
dence," says  Dean  Merivale,  "  was  the  most  wonderful 
work  of  the  Eoman  conquerors.  It  was  complete ;  it 
was  universal;  and  in  permanence  it  has  far  out- 
lasted, at  least  in  its  distinct  results,  the  duration  of 
the  Empire  itself."  A  civilisation  which,  without 
precedent  and  unaided,  out  of  its  own  resources  and 
contact  with  life,  produced  such  a  proof  of  its  idea 
and  estimate  of  law,  must,  whatever  be  its  defects,  be 
placed  very  high. 

Again,  when,  with  this  strong  and  clear  and  per- 
manent sense  of  law,  you  also  have  in  a  society,  among 
its  best  men,  a  strong  force  of  public  spirit,  and  among 
all  a  recognition  that  in  this  the  best  reflect  the 
temper  and  expectations  of  the  whole,  its  civilisation 
has  reached  a  high  level  It  is  the  civilisation  of 
those  who  have  discerned  very  distinctly  the  great 
object  and  leading  obligation  of  man's  fellowship  in  a 
state — of  his  life  as  a  citizen.     And  certainly  in  no 


i6  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  I 

people  which  the  world  has  ever  seen  has  the  sense 
of  public  duty  been  keener  and  stronger  than  in 
Eome,  or  has  lived  on  with  unimpaired  vitality 
through  great  changes  for  a  longer  time.  Amid  the 
accumulation  of  repulsive  and  dark  elements  in 
Eoman  character,  amid  the  harshness  and  pride  and 
ferocity,  often  joined  with  lower  vices,  meanness, 
perfidy,  greed,  sensuality,  there  is  one  which  again 
and  again  extorts  a  respect  that  even  courage  and 
high  ability  cannot — a  high,  undeniable  public  spirit. 
Not  always  disinterested,  any  more  than  in  some  great 
men  in  our  own  history,  but  without  question,  for  all 
that,  thoroughly  and  seriously  genuine.  It  was  a 
tradition  of  the  race.  Its  early  legends  dwelt  upon 
the  strange  and  terrible  sacrifices  which  this  supreme 
loyalty  to  the  commonwealth  had  exacted,  and 
obtained  without  a  murmur,  from  her  sons.  They 
told  of  a  magistrate  and  a  father,  the  founder  of 
Eoman  freedom,  dooming  his  two  young  sons  to  the 
axe  for  having  tampered  with  conspiracy  against  the 
State ;  of  great  men,  resigning  high  office  because  they 
bore  a  dangerous  name,  or  pulling  down  their  own 
houses  because  too  great  for  citizens ;  of  soldiers  to 
whose  death  fate  had  bound  victory,  solemnly  devot- 
ing themselves  to  die,  or  leaping  into  the  gulf  which 
would  only  close  on  a  living  victim ;  of  a  great  family 
purchasing  peace  in  civil  troubles  by  leaving  the  city, 
and  turning  their  energy  into  a  foreign  war,  in  which 
they  perished;    of  the  captive   general  who  advised 


1  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  17 

Lis  countrymen  to  send  him  back  to  certain  torture 
and  death,  rather  than  grant  the  terms  he  was  com- 
missioned to  propose  as  the  price  of  his  release. 
Whatever  we  may  think  of  these  stories,  they  show 
what  was  in  the  mind  of  those  who  told  and  repeated 
them ;  and  they  continued  to  be  the  accredited  types 
and  models  of  Eoman  conduct  throughout  Eoman 
history.  Even  in  its  bad  days,  even  at  its  close,  the 
temper  was  there,  the  sense  of  public  interest,  the  fire 
of  public  duty,  the  public  spirit  which  accepted  with- 
out complaint  trouble  and  sacrifice.  It  produced,  at 
a  time  when  hope  seemed  gone,  a  succession  of  noble 
and  high-souled  rulers,  whose  government  gave  for  a 
moment  the  fallacious  promise  of  happiness  to  the 
world.  It  produced  a  race  of  now  nameless  and  un- 
remembered  men,  who,  while  they  probably  forgot 
many  other  duties,  forgot  not  their  duty  to  the  public, 
of  which  they  were  the  servants. 

"  The  history  of  the  Csesars,"  writes  Dean  Merivale, 
"presents  to  us  a  constant  succession  of  brave, 
patient,  resolute,  and  faithful  soldiers,  men  deeply 
impressed  with  a  sense  of  duty,  superior  to  vanity, 
despisers  of  boasting,  content  to  toil  in  obscurity,  and 
shed  their  blood  at  the  frontiers  of  the  Empire,  un- 
repining  at  the  cold  mistrust  of  their  masters,  not 
clamorous  for  the  honours  so  sparingly  awarded  to 
them,  but  satisfied  with  the  daily  work  of  their  hands, 
and  full  of  faith  in  the  national  destiny  which  they 
were  daily  accomplishing.     If  such  humble  instruments 


1 8  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  I 

of  society  are  not  to  be  compared,  for  the  importance 
of  their  mission,  with  the  votaries  of  speculative 
wisdom,  who  protested  in  their  lives  and  in  their 
deaths  against  the  crimes  of  their  generation,  there  is 
still  something  touching  in  the  simple  heroism  of 
these  chiefs  of  the  legions.  .  .  .  Here  are  virtues  not 
to  be  named  indeed  with  the  zeal  of  missionaries  and 
the  devotion  of  martyrs,  but  worthy  nevertheless  of  a 
high  place  in  the  esteem  of  all  who  reverence  human 
nature." 

For  these  reasons,  and  more  might  be  added  — 
among  them,  the  real  reverence  with  which  these 
fierce  and  successful  soldiers  regarded  the  arts,  the 
pursuits,  the  dress  of  peace,  and  readily  and  willingly 
returned  to  them, — we  may  look  back  to  the  civilisa- 
tion of  Eome  with  an  interest  which  we  might  not 
give  to  its  buildings,  its  wealth,  or  its  organisation 
of  empire.  It  was  a  signal  and  impressive  proof  of 
what  men  might  rise  to  be  ;  of  the  height,  too,  to 
which  the  spirit  of  a  nation  might  rise.  The  world  is 
not  rich  enough  in  greatness  to  afford  to  forget  men 
who,  with  so  much  that  was  evil  and  hateful  about 
them,  yet  made  the  idea  of  law  a  common  thing,  and 
impressed  on  the  world  so  memorably  the  obliga- 
tions of  public  duty  and  the  sanctions  of  a  public 
trust. 

How  did  such  a  civilisation  come  to  nought  ?  It 
is  wonderful  that  it  should  have  arisen ;  but  it  is 
more  wonderful   that,  having   arisen,  it  should  have 


I  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  19 

failed  to  sustain  itself.  How  did  a  civilisation  so 
robust,  aiming  at  and  creating,  not  the  ornamental 
and  the  pleasurable,  but  the  solid  and  laborious,  a 
character  so  serious  and  manly,  austerely  simple  and 
energetic  in  men,  pure  and  noble  in  women — how  did 
it  fail  and  perish  ?  What  was  the  root  of  bitterness 
which  sprang  up  amid  its  strength,  and  brought  it, 
through  the  most  horrible  epochs  the  world  ever  saw, 
of  terror  and  tyranny,  and  the  foulest  and  most  insane 
licentiousness — epochs  which  St.  Paul's  words  in  his 
Epistle  to  the  Eomans  are  hardly  strong  enough  to 
describe — to  the  most  absolute  and  ignoble  ruin  ?  Of 
course  there  was  evil  mixed  with  it  from  the  first; 
but  evil  is  mixed  with  all  human  things,  and  evil  was 
mixed  to  the  full  with  the  life  and  institutions  out  of 
which  the  best  days  of  Christian  civilisation  have 
come,  whether  you  put  these  days  in  what  are  called 
the  ages  of  faith,  or  the  age  of  the  Eeformation,  or  the 
ages  of  civil  liberty.  Pride  and  selfish  greed,  hypo- 
crisy, corruption,  profligacy,  fraud,  cruelty,  have  been 
as  abundant  in  the  centuries  after  Christ  as  they 
were  in  those  before.  But  the  civilisation  of  Europe 
is  not  ruined,  in  spite  of  its  immense  dangers ;  I  see 
no  reason  to  think  that  it  will  be; — why  was  that 
of  Eome  ? 

To  answer  this  question  duly  would  be  to  go 
through  the  Eoman  history.  I  must  content  myself 
with  one  general  statement.  Eoman  civilisation  was 
only  great  as  long  as  men  were  true  to  their  principles ; 


20  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  I 

but  it  had  no  root  beyond  their  personal  characters 
and  traditions  and  customary  life ;  and  when  these 
failed,  it  had  nothing  else  to  appeal  to — it  had  no 
power  and  spring  of  recovery.  These  traditions,  these 
customs  of  life,  this  inherited  character,  did  keep  up 
a  stout  and  prolonged  struggle  against  the  shocks  of 
changed  circumstances,  against  the  restless  and  un- 
scrupulous cravings  of  individual  selfishness.  But 
they  played  a  losing  game.  Each  shock,  each  fresh 
blow,  found  them  weaker  after  the  last;  and  no 
favouring  respite  was  allowed  them  to  regain  and 
fortify  the  strength  they  had  lost.  The  high  instincts 
of  the  race  wore  out :  bad  men  had  nothing  to  do  but 
to  deny  that  these  instincts  were  theirs.  The  powers 
of  evil  and  of  darkness  mounted  higher  and  higher, 
turning  great  professions  into  audacious  hypocrisies, 
great  institutions  into  lifeless  and  mischievous  forms, 
great  principles  into  absurd  self-contradictions.  Had 
there  been  anything  to  fall  back  upon,  there  were 
often  men  to  do  it;  but  what  was  there  but  the 
memories  and  examples  of  past  greatness  ?  Keligion 
had  once  played  a  great  part  in  what  had  given 
elevation  to  Eoman  civil  life.  It  had  had  much  to 
do  with  law,  with  political  development,  with  Eoman 
sense  of  public  duty  and  Eoman  reverence  for  the 
State.  But,  of  course,  a  religion  of  farmers  and 
yeomen,  a  religion  of  clannish  etiquettes  and  family 
pride  and  ancestral  jealousies,  could  not  long  stand 
the  competition  of  the  Eastern  faiths,  or  the  scepticism 


I  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  21 

of  the  cultivated  classes.  It  went;  and  there  was 
nothing  to  supply  its  place  but  a  Philosophy,  often 
very  noble  and  true  in  its  language,  able,  I  doubt  not, 
in  evil  days  to  elevate,  and  comfort,  and  often  purify 
its  better  disciples,  but  unable  to  overawe,  to  heal,  to 
charm  a  diseased  society ;  which  never  could  breathe 
life  and  energy  into  words  for  the  people;  which 
wanted  that  voice  of  power  which  could  quicken  the 
dead  letter,  and  command  attention,  where  the  des- 
tinies of  the  world  were  decided.  I  know  nothing 
more  strange  and  sorrowful  in  Eoman  history  than  to 
observe  the  absolute  impotence  of  what  must  have 
been  popular  conscience,  on  the  crimes  of  statesmen 
and  the  bestial  infamy  of  Emperors.  There  were 
plenty  of  men  to  revile  them;  there  were  men  to 
brand  them  in  immortal  epigrams ;  there  were  men  to 
kill  them.  But  there  was  no  man  to  make  his  voice 
heard  and  be  respected,  about  righteousness,  and 
temperance,  and  judgment  to  come. 

And  so  Eoman  civilisation  fell, — fell,  before  even 
the  eager  troops  of  barbarians  rushed  in  among  its 
wrecks, — fell  because  it  had  no  salt  in  it,  no  whole- 
some and  reviving  leaven,  no  power  of  recovery. 
Society  could  not  bear  its  own  greatness,  its  own 
immense  possessions  and  powers,  its  own  success  and 
achievements.  It  fell,  and  great  was  the  fall  thereof 
The  world  had  never  seen  anything  like  Home  and  its 
civilisation.  It  seemed  the  finish  and  perfection  of  all 
things,  beyond  which  human  prospects  could  not  go. 


22  ROMAN  CIVILISATION  I 

The  citizens  and  statesmen  who  were  proud  of  it,  the 
peoples  who  reposed  under  its  shadow,  the  early 
Christians  who  hated  it  as  the  rival  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God,  the  men  of  the  Middle  Ages  who  looked  on 
it  as  the  earthly  counterpart  and  bulwark  of  that 
kingdom,  and  insisted  on  believing  that  it  was  still 
alive  in  the  world, — Augustine  who  contrasted  it  with 
the  city  of  God,  Dante  who  trusted  in  it  as  God's 
predestined  minister  of  truth  and  righteousness  where 
the  Church  had  failed, — all  looked  on  it  as  something 
so  consummate  and  unique  in  its  kind,  that  nothing 
could  be  conceived  or  hoped  for  which  could  take  its 
place.  Before  the  tremendous  destructions  in  which 
it  perished  the  lights  of  man's  heaven,  of  all  human 
society,  seemed  to  disappear.  Cicero  had  likened  the 
overthrow  and  extinction  of  a  city  and  policy,  once 
created  among  men,  to  the  ruin  and  passing  away  of 
the  solid  earth.  When  the  elder  civilisation  of  Eome 
went  to  pieces,  rotten  within  and  battered  by  the 
storms  without,  it  was  a  portent  and  calamity  which 
the  human  imagination  had  almost  refused  to  believe 
possible.      It  was  indeed  the  foundering  of  a  world. 

How  this  lost  civilisation  was  recovered,  renewed, 
and  filled  with  fresh  and  hopeful  life,  we  may  try  to 
see  in  the  next  lecture. 


LECTUEE   IT 

CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHEISTIANITY 

The  failure  of  Eoman  civilisation,  its  wreck  and 
dissolution  in  the  barbarian  storms,  was  the  most 
astonishing  catastrophe  the  world  had  yet  seen  in  its 
history ;  and  those  who  beheld  the  empire  breaking 
up,  as  blow  after  blow  was  struck  more  home,  ceased 
to  look  forward  to  any  future  for  society.  In  this 
strange  collapse  of  the  strongest,  in  this  incredible 
and  inconceivable  shaking  of  the  foundations  of  what 
was  assumed  to  be  eternal,  the  end  seemed  come ;  and 
as  no  one  could  imagine  a  new  and  different  order, 
men  thought  it  useless  to  hope  anything  more  for 
the  world.  It  is  not  wonderful, — but  they  were  too 
despairing.  It  is  not  wonderful, — for  they  had  no 
example  within  their  knowledge  of  the  great  lights  of 
human  Hfe,  which  seemed  destined  to  shine  for  ever, 
being  violently  extinguished,  and  then  being  rekindled, 
and  conquering  once  more  in  heightened  splendour  the 
gloom  and  confusion.  They  had  seen  empires  perish, 
but  never  before  the  defeat  of  a  matchless  structure  of 

23 


24  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  n 

law  and  administration  without  example  in  history, 
which  was  to  provide  security  for  empire.  But  they 
were  too  despairing.  They  thought  too  little  of 
powers  and  principles  new  in  the  world,  to  which 
many  of  them  trusted  much,  both  in  life  and  in  death, 
but  of  which  no  one  then  living  knew  the  strength  or 
suspected  the  working.  They  guessed  not  how  that 
while  the  barbarian  deluge  was  wasting  and  sweeping 
away  the  works  of  men,  God  was  pouring  new  life  into 
the  world.  They  guessed  not  that  in  that  Gospel, 
which  consoled  so  many  of  them  in  the  miseries  of 
this  sinful  world,  which  to  so  many  seemed  but  one 
superstition  the  more,  to  which  so  many  traced  all 
their  disasters,  there  lay  the  seeds  of  a  social  and  civil 
revival,  compared  with  which  the  familiar  refinement 
and  extolled  civilisation  of  Eome  would  one  day  come 
to  seem  little  better  than  an  instance  of  the  rudeness 
of  antiquity. 

The  decay  and  fall  of  the  old  Roman  civilisation, 
and  the  growth  out  of  its  ruins  of  a  new  one,  infinitely 
more  vigorous  and  elastic,  steady  in  its  long  course, 
patient  of  defeat  and  delay,  but  with  century  after 
century  witnessing,  on  one  point  or  another,  to  its 
unrelaxed  advance, — the  giving  way  of  one  great 
system  and  the  replacing  it  by  another, — form  a  great 
historical  phenomenon,  as  vast  as  it  is  unique  and 
without  parallel,  and  to  practical  people  not  less  full 
of  warning  than  it  is  of  hope. 

Let  us  cast  a  hasty  glance  upon  it, — it  can  be  but 


II  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  25 

a  most  hasty  and  superficial  one.  What  was  the 
change,  what  was  the  new  force,  or  element,  or  aspect 
of  the  world,  or  assemblage  of  ideas,  which  proved  able 
to  make  of  society  what  Eoman  loftiness  of  heart, 
Eoman  sagacity,  Eoman  patience,  Eoman  strength  had 
failed  to  make  of  it  ?  What  power  was  it  which  took 
up  the  discredited  and  hopeless  work,  and,  infusing  new 
energies  and  new  hopes  into  men,  has  made  the  long 
history  of  the  Western  nations  different  in  kind  from 
any  other  period  of  the  history  of  mankind ;  different 
in  this,  that  though  its  march  has  been  often  very 
dark  and  very  weary,  often  arrested  and  often  retarded, 
chequered  with  terrible  reverses,  and  stained  by  the 
most  flagrant  crimes,  it  has  never  been,  definitely  and 
for  good,  beaten  back ;  the  movement,  as  we  can  see 
when  we  review  it,  has  been  on  the  whole  a  uniform 
one,  and  has  ever  been  tending  onwards ;  it  has  never 
surrendered,  and  has  never  had  reason  to  surrender, 
the  hope  of  improvement,  even  though  improvement 
might  be  remote  and  difficult. 

We  are  told  sometimes  that  it  was  the  power  of 
race,  of  the  new  nations  which  came  on  the  scene; 
and  I  do  not  deny  it.  But  the  power  of  race  seems 
like  the  special  powers  of  a  particular  soil,  in  which 
certain  seeds  germinate  and  thrive  with  exceptional 
vigour,  but  for  which  you  must  have  the  seed,  and 
sow  it,  before  the  soil  will  display  its  properties.  It 
is  very  important,  but  it  is  not  enough  to  say  that 
Teutons  took  the  place  of  Latins  ;    indeed,  it  is  not 


26  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  n 

wholly  true.  But  what  planted  among  Teutons  and 
Latms  the  seeds  and  possibilities  of  a  renewed 
civilisation  was  the  power  of  a  new  morality.  It 
is  a  matter  of  historical  fact,  that  in  the  closing 
days  of  Eome  an  entirely  new  set  of  moral  ideas 
and  moral  purposes,  of  deep  significance,  fruitful 
in  consequences,  and  of  a  strength  and  intensity 
unknown  before,  were  making  their  way  in  society, 
and  establishing  themselves  in  it.  It  is  to  the 
awakening  of  this  new  morality,  which  has  never 
perished  out  of  the  hearts  of  men  from  that  day 
to  this,  that  the  efforts  and  the  successes  of  modern 
civilisation  are  mainly  due ;  it  is  on  the  permanence 
of  these  moral  convictions  that  it  rests.  What  the 
origin  and  root  of  this  morality  really  are,  you  will 
not  suppose  that  in  this  place  I  affect  to  make  a 
question  ;  but  the  matter  I  am  now  dwelling  on  is 
the  morality  itself,  not  on  its  connection  with  the 
Christian  creed.  And  it  is  as  clear  and  certain  a 
fact  of  history  that  the  coming  in  of  Christianity 
was  accompanied  by  new  moral  elements  in  society, 
inextinguishable,  widely  operative,  never  destroyed, 
though  apparently  at  times  crushed  and  paralysed, 
as  it  is  certain  that  Christian  nations  have  made  on 
the  whole  more  progress  in  the  wise  ordering  of 
human  life  than  was  made  in  the  most  advanced 
civilisation  of  the  times  before  Christianity. 

Koman    belief    in    right    and    law  had   ended  in 
scepticism,  whether  there  was  such  a  thing  as  good- 


II  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  27 

ness  and  virtue  :  Eoman  public  spirit  had  given 
place,  under  the  disheartening  impression  of  continual 
mistakes  and  disappointments,  to  a  selfish  indifference 
to  public  scandals  and  public  mischiefs.  The  great 
principles  of  human  action  were  hopelessly  confused ; 
enthusiasm  for  them  was  dead.  This  made  vain 
the  efforts  of  rulers  like  Trajan  and  the  Antonines, 
of  scientific  legislators  like  Justinian,  of  heroes  like 
Belisarius  ;  they  could  not  save  a  society  in  which, 
with  so  much  outward  show,  the  moral  tone  was  so 
fatally  decayed  and  enfeebled.  But  over  this  dreary 
waste  of  helplessness  and  despondency,  over  these 
mud -banks  and  shallows,  the  tide  was  coming  in  and 
mounting.  Slowly,  variably,  in  imperceptible  pulsa- 
tions, or  in  strange,  wild  rushes,  the  great  wave  was 
flowing.  There  had  come  into  the  world  an  enthu- 
siasm, popular,  widespread,  serious,  of  a  new  kind  ; 
not  for  conquest,  or  knowledge,  or  riches,  but  for 
real,  solid  goodness.  It  seems  to  me  that  the 
exultation  apparent  in  early  Christian  literature, 
beginning  with  the  Apostolic  Epistles,  at  the  prospect 
now  at  length  disclosed  within  the  bounds  of  a  sober 
hope,  of  a  great  moral  revolution  in  human  life, — 
that  the  rapturous  confidence  which  pervades  these 
Christian  ages,  that  at  last  the  routine  of  vice  and 
sin  has  met  its  match,  that  a  new  and  astonishing 
possibility  has  come  within  view,  that  men,  not  here 
and  there,  but  on  a  large  scale,  might  attain  to  that 
hitherto  hopeless  thing  to  the  multitudes,  goodness, — 


28  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  ii 

is  one  of  the  most  singular  and  solemn  things  in 
history.  The  enthusiasm  of  the  Crusades,  the  en- 
thusiasm of  Puritanism,  the  enthusiasm  of  the  Jacobins 
— of  course  I  am  speaking  only  of  strength  and  depth 
of  feeling — were  not  its  equal.  We  can,  I  suppose, 
have  but  a  dim  idea  of  the  strange  and  ravishing  novelty 
with  which  the  appearance  of  Divine  and  unearthly 
Goodness,  in  real  human  form,  burst  upon  eyes  ac- 
customed, as  to  an  order  of  nature,  to  the  unbroken 
monotony  of  deepening  debasement,  wearied  out  with 
the  unchanging  spectacle  of  irremediable  sin.  The 
visitation  and  presence  of  that  High  Goodness,  making 
Himself  like  men,  calling  men  to  be  like  Him,  had 
altered  the  possibilities  of  human  nature ;  it  was 
mirrored  more  or  less  perfectly  in  a  thousand  lives ;  it 
had  broken  the  spell  and  custom  of  evil  which  seemed 
to  bind  human  society;  it  had  brought  goodness 
real,  inward,  energetic  goodness  of  the  soul  within 
the  reach  of  those  who  seemed  most  beyond  it — the 
crowds,  the  dregs,  the  lost.  That  well-known  world, 
the  scene  of  man's  triumphs  and  of  his  untold  sorrows, 
but  not  of  his  goodness,  was  really  a  place  where 
righteousness  and  love  and  purity  should  have  a 
visible  seat  and  home,  and  might  wield  the  power 
which  sin  had  wielded  over  the  purposes  and  wills 
of  men.  To  men  on  whom  this  great  surprise  had 
come,  who  were  in  the  vortex  of  this  great  change, 
all  things  looked  new.  Apart  from  the  infinite 
seriousness  given  to  human  life  by  the  cross  of  Christ, 


II  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  29 

from  the  infinite  value  and  dignity  given  to  it  by  the 
revelation  of  resurrection  and  immortality,  an  awful 
rejoicing  transport  filled  their  souls,  as  they  saw  that 
there  was  the  chance, — more  than  the  chance, — the 
plain  forerunning  signs,  of  human  nature  becoming  here, 
what  none  had  ever  dared  to  think  it  would  become, 
morally  better.  When  they  speak  of  this  new  thing  in 
the  earth,  the  proved  reality  of  conversion  from  sin  to 
righteousness,  of  the  fruits  of  repentance,  of  the  sup- 
planting of  vice  by  yet  mightier  influences  of  purity, 
of  the  opening  and  boundless  prospects  of  moral 
improvement  and  elevation, — their  hearts  swell,  their 
tone  is  exalted,  their  accent  becomes  passionate  and 
strong.  It  was  surely  the  noblest  enthusiasm — if  it 
was  but  rooted  in  lasting  and  trustworthy  influences 
— which  the  world  had  ever  seen.  It  was  no  wonder 
that  this  supreme  interest  eclipsed  all  other  interests. 
It  is  no  wonder  that  for  this  glorious  faith  men 
gladly  died. 

This  second  springtide  of  the  world,  this  fresh 
start  of  mankind  in  the  career  of  their  eventful 
destiny,  was  the  beginning  of  many  things ;  but 
what  I  observe  on  now  is  that  it  was  the  besjinninof 
of  new  chances,  new  impulses,  and  new  guarantees 
for  civilised  life,  in  the  truest  and  worthiest  sense 
of  the  words.  It  was  this,  by  bringing  into  society 
a  morality  which  was  serious  and  powerful,  and  a 
morality  which  would  wear  and  last ;  one  which 
could     stand     the     shocks     of    human    passion,    the 


30  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  il 

desolating  spectacle  of  successful  wickedness,  the 
insidious  waste  of  unconscious  degeneracy,  —  one 
which  could  go  back  to  its  sacred  springs  and 
repair  its  fire  and  its  strength.  Such  a  morality, 
as  Eoman  greatness  was  passing  away,  took  pos- 
session of  the  ground.  Its  beginnings  were  scarcely 
felt,  scarcely  known  of,  in  the  vast  movement  of 
affairs  in  the  greatest  of  empires.  By  and  by  its 
presence,  strangely  austere,  strangely  gentle,  strangely 
tender,  strangely  inflexible,  began  to  be  noticed.  But 
its  work  was  long  only  a  work  of  indirect  preparation. 
Those  whom  it  charmed,  those  whom  it  opposed,  those 
whom  it  tamed,  knew  not  what  was  being  done 
for  the  generations  which  were  to  follow  them. 
They  knew  not,  while  they  heard  of  the  household  of 
God,  and  the  universal  brotherhood  of  man,  that  the 
most  ancient  and  most  familiar  institution  of  their 
society,  one  without  which  they  could  not  conceive  its 
going  on, — slavery, — was  receiving  the  fatal  wound 
of  which,  though  late,  too  late,  it  was  at  last  to  die. 
They  knew  not,  when  they  were  touched  by  the  new 
teaching  about  forgiveness  and  mercy,  that  a  new 
value  was  being  insensibly  set  on  human  life,  new  care 
and  sympathy  planted  in  society  for  human  suffering, 
a  new  horror  awakened  at  human  bloodshed.  They 
knew  not,  while  they  looked  on  men  dying,  not  for 
glory  or  even  country,  but  for  convictions  and  an  in- 
visible truth,  that  a  new  idea  was  springing  up  of  the 
sacredness  of  conscience,  a  new  reverence  beginning  for 


II  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  31 

veracity  and  faithfulness.  They  knew  not  that  a  new 
measure  was  being  established  of  the  comparative  value 
of  riches  and  all  earthly  things,  while  they  saw,  some- 
times with  amazement,  sometimes  with  inconsiderate 
imitativeness,  the  numbers  who  gave  up  the  world, 
and  all  that  was  best  as  well  as  worst  in  it,  for  love 
of  the  eternal  heritage — in  order  to  keep  themselves 
pure.  They  knew  not  of  the  great  foundations  laid 
for  pubKc  duty  and  public  spirit,  in  the  obligations  of 
Christian  membership,  in  the  responsibilities  of  the 
Christian  clergy,  in  the  never -forgotten  example  of 
One  whose  life  had  been  a  perpetual  service,  and  who 
had  laid  it  down  as  the  most  obvious  of  claims  for 
those  to  whom  He  had  bound  Himself  They  little 
thought  of  what  was  in  store  for  civil  and  secular 
society,  as  they  beheld  a  number  of  humble  men,  many 
of  them  foreigners,  plying  their  novel  trade  of  preachers 
and  missionaries,  announcing  an  eternal  kingdom  of 
righteousness,  welcoming  the  slave  and  the  outcast  as 
a  brother, — a  brother  of  the  Highest, — offering  hope 
and  change  to  the  degraded  sinner,  stammering  of 
Christ  and  redemption  to  the  wild  barbarian,  worship- 
ping in  the  catacombs,  and  meekly  burying  their  dead, 
perhaps  their  wronged  and  murdered  dead,  in  the  sure 
hope  of  everlasting  peace.  Slowly,  obscurely,  imper- 
fectly, most  imperfectly,  these  seeds  of  blessing  for 
society  began  to  ripen,  to  take  shape,  to  gain  power. 
The  time  was  still  dark  and  wintry  and  tempestuous; 
and  the  night  was  long  in  going.     It  is  hard  even  now 


32  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  ii 

to  discern  there  the  promise  of  what  our  eyes  have 
seen.  I  suppose  it  was  impossible  then.  It  rather 
seemed  as  if  the  world  was  driving  rapidly  to  its  end, 
not  that  it  was  on  the  eve  of  its  most  amazing  and 
hopeful  transformation.  But  in  that  unhappy  and 
desponding  and  unhonoured  time,  borne  in  the  bosom 
of  that  institution  and  society  which  the  world  knew 
and  knows  as  the  Christian  Church,  there  were  pre- 
sent the  necessary  and  manifold  conditions  of  the  most 
forward  civilisation ;  of  its  noblest  features,  of  its  sub- 
stantial good,  of  its  justice,  its  order,  its  humanity,  its 
hopefulness,  its  zeal  for  improvement : — 

There  is  a  day  in  spring 
When  under  all  the  earth  the  secret  germs 
Begin  to  stir  and  glow  before  they  bud. 
The  wealth  and  festal  pomps  of  midsummer 
Lie  in  the  heart  of  that  inglorious  hour 
"Which  no  man  names  with  blessing,  though  its  work 
Is  blessed  by  all  the  world.     Such  days  there  are 
In  the  slow  story  of  the  growth  of  souls.  ^ 

And  such  a  day  there  was  in  the  "  slow  story " 
of  the  improvement  and  progress  of  civihsed  Chris- 
tendom. 

The  point  I  wish  to  insist  on  is,  that  with  Chris- 
tianity, as  long  as  there  is  Christianity,  there  comes  a 
moral  spring  and  vitality  and  force,  a  part  and  conse- 
quence of  its  influence,  which  did  not  and  could  not 
exist  before  it.  You  cannot  conceive  of  Christianity 
except  as  a  moral  religion,  requiring,  inspiring  moral- 

1  Story  of  Queen  Isabel.     By  Miss  Smedley. 


II  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  33 

ity ;  and  it  was  just  this  spring,  this  force  of  morality, 
which  was  wanting,  and  which  could  not  be,  in  Roman 
civihsation.  Morality  there  was,  often  in  a  high  de- 
gree ;  but  it  came  and  went  with  men  or  with  genera- 
tions, and  there  was  nothing  to  keep  it  alive,  nothing 
to  rekindle  it  when  extinct,  nothing  to  suggest  and 
nourish  its  steady  improvement.  At  any  rate  there 
was  not  enough,  if,  when  we  remember  the  influence 
of  great  examples  and  great  writers,  it  is  too  sweeping 
to  say  there  was  nothing.  But  with  Christianity  the 
condition  was  changed.  I  am  sure  I  am  not  unmind- 
ful of  what  shortcomings,  what  shames  and  sins,  what 
dark  infamies,  blot  the  history  of  Christian  society.  I 
do  not  forget  that  Christian  morality  has  been  a  thing 
of  degrees  and  impulses,  rising  and  falling ;  that  it  has 
been  at  times  impracticably  extreme,  and  at  times 
scandalously  lax ;  that  there  have  been  periods  when 
it  seemed  lost ;  that  in  some  of  its  best  days  it  has 
been  unaccountably  blind  and  perversely  stupid  and 
powerless,  conniving  at  gross  and  undeniable  inconsis- 
tencies, condoning  flagrant  wrong.  This  is  true.  Yet 
look  through  all  the  centuries  since  it  appeared,  and 
see  if  ever,  in  the  worst  and  darkest  of  them,  it  was 
not  there,  as  it  never  was  in  Rome,  for  hope,  if  not 
for  present  help  and  remedy.  There  was  an  undying 
voice,  even  if  it  came  from  the  lips  of  hypocrites, 
which  witnessed  perpetually  of  mercy,  justice,  and 
peace.  There  was  a  seriousness  given  to  human  life, 
by  a  death  everywhere  died  in  the  prospect  of  the 


34  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  ii 

judgment.  I  am  putting  things  at  the  worst.  Chris- 
tian morality  lived  even  in  the  tenth  century ;  even 
in  the  times  of  the  Borgias  and  Medici.  The  wicked 
passed — the  wicked  age,  the  wicked  men ;  passed, 
with  the  evil  they  had  done,  with  the  good  which 
they  had  frustrated,  with  the  righteous  whom  they 
had  silenced  or  slain.  And  when  they  were  gone, 
"  when  the  tyranny  was  overpast,"  the  unforgotten 
law  of  right,  the  inextinguishable  power  of  conscience, 
were  found  to  have  survived  unweakened  through  the 
hour  of  darkness,  ready  to  reassert  and  to  extend  their 
empire.  Great  as  have  been  the  disasters  and  failures 
of  Christian  society,  I  think  we  have  not  yet  seen  the 
kind  of  hopeless  collapse  in  which  Eoman  civilisation 
ended.  Feeble  and  poor  as  the  spring  of  morahty 
might  be  in  this  or  that  people,  there  has  hitherto 
been  something  to  appeal  to,  and  to  hope  from,  which 
was  not  to  be  found  in  the  days  of  the  Antonines,  the 
most  peaceful  and  felicitous  of  Eoman  times. 

In  this  great  restoration  of  civilisation,  which  is 
due  mainly  to  the  impulse  and  the  power  of  Christian 
morality,  a  great  place  must  be  given  to  the  direct 
influence  of  Christian  aspects  of  life  and  ideas  of  duty. 
Christian  ideas  of  purity  acted  directly  on  all  that 
was  connected  with  family  and  domestic  life.  They 
forbade,  with  intense  and  terrible  severity,  before 
which  even  passion  quailed,  the  frightful  liberty  in 
the  relations  of  the  sexes  which  in  Greece,  and  at  last 
in  Eome,  had  been  thouojht   so  natural.     Here  was 


II  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  35 

one  great  point  fixed :  the  purification  of  the  home, 
the  sanctity  thrown  round  the  wife  and  the  mother, 
the  rescuing  of  the  unmarried  from  the  assumed 
license  of  nature,  the  protection  given  to  the  honour 
of  the  female  slave  and  then  of  the  female  servant, 
were  social  victories  well  worth  the  unrelenting  and 
often  extravagant  asceticism  which  was,  perhaps,  their 
inevitable  price  at  first.  They  were  the  immediate 
effects  of  a  belief  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount ;  and 
where  that  belief  was  held,  they  would  more  or  less 
consistently  follow.  So  with  the  fiercer  tempers  and 
habits  of  men ;  against  cruelty,  against  high-handed 
oppression  and  abuse  of  strength,  there  was  a  constant, 
unyielding  protest  in  the  Christian  law  of  jastice  and 
charity,  continually  unheeded,  never  unfelt ;  even  war 
and  vengeance  were  uneasy  under  the  unceasing 
though  unavailing  rebuke  of  the  Gospel  law,  and 
made  concessions  to  it,  though  too  strong,  too  fatally 
necessary,  to  submit  to  it.  Further,  under  the  influ- 
ence of  Christian  morality,  later  civilisation  showed  a 
power  of  appropriating  and  assimilating  all  that  was 
noble  and  salutary  in  its  older  forms.  It  appropriated 
the  Eoman  idea  of  law,  and  gave  it  a  larger  and  more 
equitable  scope,  and  a  more  definite  consecration  to 
the  ends  of  justice  and  the  common  good.  It  in- 
vested the  ancient  idea  of  citizenship  and  patriotism 
with  simpler  and  more  generous  feelings,  and  with 
yet  holier  sanctions.  It  accepted  from  the  ancient 
thinkers  their  philosophic  temper  and  open  spirit  of 


36  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  ii 

inquiry,  and  listened  reverentially  to  their  lessons  of 
wisdom.  It  reinforced  the  Eoman  idea,  a  confused 
and  inconsistent  though  a  gi-owing  one,  of  the  unity 
of  the  human  race ;  and  though  the  victory  over  cus- 
tom and  appearances  is  hardly  yet  won,  the  tendency 
to  recognise  that  unity  can  never  fail,  while  the  belief 
prevails  that  Christ  died  for  the  world.  And  once 
more,  it  is  not  easy  to  say  what  Christian  behef, 
Christian  life,  Christian  literature  have  done  to  make 
the  greatest  thoughts  of  the  ancient  world  "  come 
home  to  men's  business  and  bosoms."  No  one  can 
read  the  wonderful  sayings  of  Seneca,  Epictetus,  or 
Marcus  Aurehus,  without  being  impressed,  abashed 
perhaps,  by  their  grandeur.  No  one  can  read  them 
without  wondering  the  next  moment  why  they  fell 
so  dead  —  how  little  response  they  seemed  to  have 
awakened  round  them.  What  was  then  but  the  word 
of  the  solitary  thinker  has  now  become  the  possession, 
if  they  will,  of  the  multitude.  The  letter  of  great 
maxims  has  been  filled  with  a  vivifying  spirit.  Their 
truths  have  been  quickened  into  new  meaning  by  the 
new  morality  in  which  they  have  found  a  place,  by 
the  more  general  and  keener  conscience  which  has 
owned  them. 

The  direct  effects  of  Christian  morality  on  modern 
civilisation  would  be  allowed  by  most  people  to  be 
manifest  and  great.  I  wish  to  call  attention  to  one 
or  two  points  of  its  indirect  influence.  Civilisation, 
the  ordering  with  the   utmost    attainable  success,  of 


II  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  37 

civil  and  secular  life,  is  one  thing ;  and  Christian 
religion  is  another.  They  are  two  currents,  meeting 
from  time  to  time,  inosculating,  sometimes  confused, 
at  other  times  divergent  and  possibly  flowing  different 
ways ;  but,  anyhow,  they  are  two  currents.  Take 
such  a  picture  of  real  daily  human  interests  and 
human  activity  as  is  presented  to  us  in  so  wonderful, 
so  overwhelming,  though  so  familiar  a  shape,  in  the 
columns,  and  quite  as  much  in  the  advertisements,  of 
a  great  newspaper ;  or  again,  when  we  thread  the 
streets  and  crowds  of  a  great  city,  and  try  to  imagine 
the  infinite  aims  and  divisions  of  its  business.  There 
is  the  domain  of  civilisation,  its  works,  its  triumphs, 
its  failures  and  blots ;  and  its  main  scope  is  this  life, 
whatever  be  the  affinities  and  relations  by  which  it 
has  to  do  with  what  concerns  man's  other  life.  But 
the  point  that  seems  to  me  worth  notice  is  this  :  the 
way  in  which  the  Christian  current  of  thought,  of  aim, 
of  conscience,  of  life,  has  affected  the  other  current, 
even  where  separated  and  remote  from  it.  We  are 
told  that  the  presence  of  electrical  force  in  one  body 
induces  a  corresponding  force  in  another  not  in  con- 
tact with  the  first,  but  adjacent  to  it ;  that  one  set  of 
forces  is  raised  to  greater  than  their  normal  power 
and  intensity  by  the  neighbourhood  of  another ;  that 
currents  passing  in  a  given  direction  communicate,  as 
long  as  they  continue,  new  properties  to  a  body  round 
which  they  circulate  :  the  neutral  iron  becomes  a  mag- 
net, attracting,  vibrating,  able  to  hold  up  weights,  as 


38  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  ii 

long  as  it  is  encircled  by  a  galvanic  circuit,  which 
does  not  touch  or  traverse  it.  So  the  presence  of 
Christian  forces  acted,  by  a  remote  and  indirect 
sympathy,  even  where  they  did  not  mingle  and  pene- 
trate in  their  proper  shape.  Much  of  civilisation  has 
always  been  outside  of  Christianity,  and  its  leaders 
and  agents  have  often  not  thought  of  Christianity  in 
their  work.  But  they  worked  in  its  neighbourhood, 
among  those  who  owned  it,  among  those  who  saw  it, 
among  those  who  lived  by  it :  and  the  conscientious- 
ness, the  zeal,  the  single  -  mindedness,  the  spirit  of 
improvement,  the  readiness  for  labour  and  trouble, 
the  considerateness  and  sympathy,  the  manly  modesty, 
which  are  wherever  Christianity  has  "  had  its  perfect 
work,"  have  developed  and  sustained  kindred  tempers, 
where  aims  and  pursuits,  and  the  belief  in  which  a 
man  habitually  lives,  have  been  in  a  region  far  away 
from  religion.  Take  the  administration  of  justice.  It 
has  been,  it  must  be,  in  society,  whether  there  is 
religion  or  not.  It  was  found  in  Eoman  times,  up  to 
a  certain  point,  in  a  very  remarkable  degree  of  per- 
fection. It  has  been,  it  may  still  be,  in  Christian 
times,  carried  on,  and  admirably  carried  on,  by  men 
who  do  not  care  for  Christianity.  I  am  very  far 
indeed  from  saying  that  in  these  times  it  has  always 
been  worthy  either  of  Christianity  or  ci\dlisation.  But 
I  suppose  we  may  safely  say  that  it  has  been  distinctly 
improving  through  the  Christian  centuries.  We  may 
safely  say  that  in  its  best  and  most  improved  stages 


II  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  39 

it  is  an  admirable  exhibition  of  some  of  the  noblest 
qualities  of  human  character ;  honesty,  strength  with- 
out show,  incorruptness,  scrupulous  care,  unwearied 
patience,  desire  for  right  and  for  truth,  and  laborious 
quest  of  them,  public  feeling,  humanity,  compassion 
even  when  it  is  a  duty  to  be  stern.  There  were  great 
and  upright  Eoman  magistrates  ;  but  whatever  Eoman 
jurisprudence  attained  to,  there  was  no  such  adminis- 
tration of  justice,  where  men  thought  and  felt  right, 
and  did  right,  as  a  matter  of  course.  And  is  it  too 
much  to  say  that  the  growing  and  gathering  power  of 
ideas  of  duty,  right,  and  mercy,  derived  from  Chris- 
tianity, have  wrought  and  have  conquered,  even  when 
their  source  was  not  formally  acknowledged,  even 
when  it  was  kept  at  a  distance ;  and  that  they  have 
given  a  security  for  one  of  the  first  essentials  of 
civilisation,  which  is  distinctly  due  to  their  perhaps 
circuitous  and  remote  influence  ? 

But,  after  all,  it  may  not  unreasonably  occur  to 
you  that  I  am  claiming  too  much  for  the  civilisation 
of  Christian  times ;  that  my  account  of  it  is  one- 
sided and  unfairly  favourable.  Putting  aside  the 
earlier  centuries  of  confusion  and  struggle,  when  it 
might  be  urged  that  real  tendencies  had  not  yet 
time  to  work  themselves  clear,  what  is  there  to 
choose,  it  may  be  said,  between  the  worst  Eoman 
days  and  many  periods  of  later  history,  long  after 
Christianity  had  made  good  its  footing  in  society  ? 
What  do  we  say  to  the  dislocation,  almost  the  dis- 


40  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  ii 

solution,  of  society  in  great  wars, — the  English  Inva- 
sion, the  Wars  of  the  League,  in  France,  our  own 
civil  wars,  the  municipal  feuds  in  Italy,  the  Thirty 
Years'  War  in  Germany  ?  What  to  the  civilisation 
of  the  ages  like  those  of  Louis  XIY.  and  Louis  XV., 
full  of  brilliancy,  full  of  most  loathsome  unrighteous- 
ness and  corruption,  gilded  by  the  profoundest  out- 
ward honour  for  religion  ?  What  shall  we  say  of 
Inquisitions,  and  Penal  Laws,  and  here,  in  our  own 
England,  of  a  criminal  code  which,  up  to  the  end  of 
the  last  century,  hanged  mere  children  for  a  trifling 
theft  ?  What  shall  we  say  of  the  huge  commercial 
dishonesties  of  our  own  age,  of  our  pauperism,  of 
our  terrible  inequalities  and  contrasts  of  wealth  and 
life  ?  What  shall  we  say  of  a  great  nation  almost 
going  to  pieces  before  our  eyes,  and  even  now  moving 
anxiously  to  a  future  which  no  one  pretends  to  fore- 
see ?  What  advantage  have  we,  how  is  civilisation 
the  better  for  the  influence  on  it  of  Christianity,  if 
this,  and  much  more  like  this,  is  what  is  shown  by  the 
history  and  the  facts  of  the  modern  world  ? 

It  will  at  once  suggest  itself  to  you  that  when  we 
speak  of  civilisation  we  speak  of  a  thing  of  infinite 
degrees  and  variety.  Every  man  in  this  congregation 
stands,  probably,  at  a  different  point  from  all  his 
neighbours  in  the  success  with  which,  if  I  may  use 
the  words,  he  has  made  himself  a  man ;  has  developed 
the  capacities  and  gifts  which  are  in  him,  has  fulfilled 
the  purpose  and   done   the   work   for  which   he   was 


II  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  41 

made  to  live,  has  reached  "  the  measure  of  the  fulness 
of  that  stature  "  which  he  might  and  was  intended  to 
attain.  And  so  with  societies,  and  different  times  in 
the  history  of  a  society.  There  have  been  in  Chris- 
tian times  poor  and  feeble  forms  of  civilisation,  there 
have  been  degenerate  ones,  as  there  have  been  strong 
ones ;  and  in  the  same  society  there  have  been  mon- 
strous and  flagrant  inconsistencies,  things  left  undone, 
unrighted,  unnoticed,  the  neglect  of  which  seems  un- 
accountable, things  quietly  taken  for  granted  which  it 
is  amazing  that  a  Christian  conscience  could  tolerate. 
Think  how  long  and  how  patiently  good  men  accepted 
negro  slavery,  who  would  have  set  the  world  in  flame 
rather  than  endure  slavery  at  home.  Human  nature 
is  wayward  and  strange  in  the  proportion  which  it 
keeps  in  its  perceptions  of  duty,  in  its  efforts  and 
achievements.  But  for  all  this  it  seems  to  me  idle  to 
deny  that  men  in  Christian  times  have  reached  a 
higher  level,  and  have  kept  it,  in  social  and  civil  life, 
than  they  ever  reached  before,  and  that  this  is  dis- 
tinctly to  be  traced  to  the  presence  and  action  in 
society  of  Christian  morality. 

But  this  is  not  what  I  wanted  specially  to  say. 
What  I  want  you  to  notice,  as  new,  since  Christianity 
began  to  act  on  society,  as  unprecedented,  as  charac- 
teristic, is  the  power  of  recovery  which  appears  in 
society  in  the  Christian  centuries.  What  is  the 
whole  history  of  modern  Europe  but  the  history  of 
such   recoveries  ?      And  what  is  there  like  it  to  be 


42  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  ii 

found  in  the  ancient  world  ?  Dark  days  have  been, 
indeed,  in  Christendom.  Society  seemed  to  be  break- 
ing up,  as  it  did  at  last  at  Eome.  But  wait  awhile, 
and  you  saw  that  which  you  looked  for  in  vain  at 
Eome.  The  tide  began  to  turn ;  the  energy,  the 
indignation,  the  resolute,  unflinching  purpose  of 
reformation  began  to  show  itself;  and  whether  wise 
or  not,  whether  in  its  special  and  definite  work  a 
failure  or  even  a  mischief,  it  was  at  least  enough  to 
rouse  society,  to  set  it  on  a  new  course,  to  disturb 
that  lethargy  of  custom  which  is  so  fatal,  to  make 
men  believe  that  it  was  not  a  law  of  nature  or  of 
fate,  that  "as  things  had  been,  things  must  be." 
That  terrible  disease  of  public  and  stagnant  despair 
which  killed  Eoman  society  has  not  had  the  mastery 
yet  in  Christian ;  in  evil  days,  sooner  or  later,  there 
have  been  men  to  believe  that  they  could  improve 
things,  even  if,  in  fact,  they  could  not.  And  for  that 
power  of  hope,  often,  it  may  be,  chimerical  and 
hazardous,  but  hope  which  has  done  so  much  for 
the  improvement  of  social  life,  the  world  is  indebted 
to  Christianity.  It  was  part  of  the  very  essence  of 
Christianity  not  to  let  evil  alone.  It  was  bound,  it 
was  its  instinct,  to  attack  it.  Christian  men  have 
often,  no  doubt,  mistaken  the  evil  which  they  at- 
tacked ;  but  their  acquiescence  in  supposed  evil,  and 
their  hopelessness  of  a  victory  for  good,  would  have 
been  worse  for  the  world  than  their  mistakes.  The 
great  reforms  in  Christian  days  have  been  very  mixed 


II  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  43 

ones;  but  they  have  heen  reforms^  an  uninterrupted 
series  of  attempts  at  better  things ;  for  society,  for 
civilisation,  successive  and  real,  though  partial  re- 
coveries. The  monastic  life,  which  was,  besides  its 
other  aspects,  the  great  civiUsing  agent  in  the  rural 
populations ;  the  varied  and  turbulent  municipal  life 
in  the  cities;  the  institutions  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
on  a  broad  and  grand  scale^  for  teaching,  for  study, 
for  preaching,  for  the  reformation  of  manners ;  the 
determined  and  sanguine  ventures  of  heroic  en- 
thusiasts, like  St.  Bernard,  Savonarola,  or  Luther, 
or  of  gentler,  but  not  less  resolute  reformers,  like 
Erasmus  and  our  own  Dean  Colet ;  the  varied  schemes 
for  human  improvement,  so  varied,  so  opposed,  so 
incompatible,  yet  in  purpose  one,  of  Jesuits,  of 
Puritans,  of  the  great  Frenchmen  of  Port  Eoyal, — 
all  witness  to  the  undying,  unwearied  temper  which 
had  bpen  kindled  in  society,  and  which  ensured  it 
from  the  mere  ruin  of  helplessness  and  despair. 
They  were  all  mistakes,  you  will  say  perhaps,  or 
fuU  of  mistakes.  Yes,  but  we  all  do  our  work 
through  mistakes,  and  the  boldest  and  most  suc- 
cessful of  us  perhaps  make  the  most.  They  failed 
in  the  ambitious  completeness,  the  real  one-sidedness 
and  narrowness,  of  their  aim ;  but  they  left  their 
mark,  if  only  in  this — that  they  exhibited  men  in 
the  struggle  with  evil  and  the  effort  after  improve- 
ment, refusing  to  give  up,  refusing  to  be  beaten. 
But  indeed   they   were   more   than   this.     There   are 


44  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  ii 

none,  I  suppose,  of  these  great  stirrings  of  society, 
however  little  we  may  sympathise  with  them,  which 
have  not  contributed  something  for  which  those  who 
come  after  are  the  better.  The  wilder  or  the  feebler 
ones  were  an  earnest  of  something  more  reasonable 
and  serious.  They  mark  and  secure,  for  some  im- 
portant principle  or  idea,  a  step  which  cannot  easily 
be  put  back.  They  show,  as  the  whole  history  of 
Christendom,  with  all  its  dismal  tracts  of  darkness 
and  blood,  seems  to  me  to  show,  that  society  in 
Christian  times  has  somehow  or  other  possessed  a 
security,  a  charm  against  utter  ruin,  which  society 
before  them  had  not ;  that  it  has  been  able  to  go 
through  the  most  desperate  crises,  and  at  length 
throw  off  the  evil,  and  continue  on  its  path  not 
perhaps  unharmed,  yet  with  a  new  chance  of  life ; 
that,  following  its  course  from  first  to  last,  we  find 
in  it  a  tough,  indestructible  force  of  resistance  to 
decay,  a  continual,  unworn-out  spring  of  revival, 
renovation,  restoration,  recovery,  and  augmented 
strength,  which,  wherever  it  comes  from,  is  most 
marked  and  surprising,  and  which  forms  an  essential 
difference  between  Christian  society  and  the  conditions 
of  society  before  and  beyond  Christian  influences. 

I  must  bring  to  an  end  what  I  have  to  say.  I 
know  quite  well  that  the  subject  is  not  finished. 
But  there  are  various  reasons  why  at  present  I  am 
unable  to  finish  it.  Yet  I  hope  I  shall  not  have 
quite  wasted  your  time  if  I  have   said   anything  to 


II  CIVILISATION  AFTER  CHRISTIANITY  45 

make  you  wish  to  inquire  and  to  think  about  this 
supreme  question ;  the  relations  of  our  modern 
civilisation,  not  only  so  refined,  and  so  full  of  arts 
and  appliances  and  great  organisations,  but  so  serious, 
to  those  eternal  truths  which  lead  up  our  thoughts 
to  the  ultimate  destinies  of  man,  to  the  Throne  of 
the  Most  High  and  the  Most  Holy.  Society  is 
debating  whether  it  sliall  remain  Christian  or  not. 
I  hope  that  all  who  hear  me,  the  majority  of  whom 
twenty  years  hence,  when  I  and  my  contemporaries 
shall  have  passed  from  the  scene,  will  belong  to  the 
grown-up  generation  which  then  will  have  the  fate  of 
English  society  in  their  hands,  will  learn  to  reflect  on 
that  question  with  the  seriousness  which  it  deserves. 


ON  SOME 

INFLUENCES   OF   CHEISTIANITY 

UPON 

NATIONAL    CIIAEACTER 


THEEE    LECTUEES 

DELIVERED  IN  ST.  PAUL'S  CATHEDRAL 

February  ith,  llth,  and  ISth,  1873 


47 


LECTUEE    I 

INFLUENCE  OF  CHEISTIANITY  ON  NATIONAL  CHARACTER 

I  PROPOSE  on  this  occasion  to  invite  you  to  consider 
some  of  the  ways  in  which  national  character  has  been 
affected  by  Christianity,  and  to  trace  these  effects  in 
certain  leading  types  of  national  character  which 
appear  to  have  been  specially  influenced  by  Christi- 
anity : — The  character  of  the  European  races  belong- 
ing to  the  Eastern  Churchy  particularly  the  Greek ; 
that  of  the  Southern,  or,  as  they  are  called,  the  Latin 
races,  particularly  the  Italians  and  French;  and, 
lastly,  that  of  the  Teutonic  races.  These  three 
divisions  will  supply  the  subjects  of  the  three  lectures 
which  it  is  my  business  to  deliver. 

It  is  obvious  that  within  the  limits  to  which  I  am 
confined,  such  a  subject  can  be  treated  only  in  the 
most  general  outline.  Within  these  great  divisions 
national  character  varies  greatly.  And  national 
character,  real  as  is  the  meaning  conveyed  by  the 
term,  is  yet,  when  we  come  to  analyse  and  describe  it, 
so  delicate   and   subtle   a   thing,  so   fugitive,  and   so 

49 


50        CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  i 

complex  in  the  traits  and  shades  which  produce  the 
picture,  that  its  portraiture  tasks  the  skill  of  the 
most  practised  artist,  and  overtasks  that  of  most. 
But  yet,  that  there  is  such  a  thing  is  as  certain  as 
that  there  is  a  general  type  of  physiognomy  or  expres- 
sion characteristic  of  different  races.  One  by  one,  no 
doubt,  many  faces  might  belong  equally  to  English- 
men or  Frenchmen,  Italians,  Greeks,  or  Eussians.  But, 
in  spite  of  individual  uncertainties,  the  type,  on  the 
whole,  asserts  itself  with  curious  clearness.  If  you 
cannot  be  sure  of  it  in  single  faces,  it  strikes  you  in 
a  crowd.  In  one  of  the  years  of  our  Exhibitions, 
an  illustrated  paper  published  an  engraving — it  was 
the  border,  I  think,  of  a  large  representation  of  the 
Exhibition  building — in  which  were  ranged  in  long 
procession  representatives  of  the  chief  nationalities 
supposed  to  be  collected  at  the  Exhibition,  or  contri- 
buting to  it.  Dress  and  other  things  had,  of  course, 
much  to  do  with  marking  them  out  one  from  another ; 
but  beyond  dress  and  adjuncts  like  dress,  there  was 
the  unmi^akable  type  of  face,  caught  with  singular 
keenness  of  discrimination,  and  exhibited  without 
exaggeration  or  a  semblance  of  caricature.  The  types 
were  average  ones,  such  as  every  one  recognised  and 
associated  with  this  or  that  familiar  nationality ;  and 
the  differences  were  as  real  between  the  more 
nearly  related  types  as  between  the  most  strongly 
opposed  ones, — as  real  between  the  various  members  of 
the  European  family  as  between  European  and  Chinese, 


I  CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER        51 

though  the  difficulty  of  detecting  and  expressing  the 
differences  is  greater  in  proportion  as  these  differences 
pass  from  broad  and  obvious  ones  to  such  as  are  fine 
and  complicated.  So  it  is  with  national  character. 
The  attempt  to  define  it,  to  criticise  it,  to  trace  its 
sources,  to  distinguish  between  what  it  is  and  what  it 
seems,  to  compare  and  balance  its  good  and  its  bad — 
this  attempt  may  be  awkward  and  bungling,  may  be 
feeble,  one-sided,  unjust.  It  may  really  miss  all  the 
essential  and  important  features,  and  dwell  with  dis- 
proportionate emphasis  on  such  as  are  partial  and 
trivial,  or  are  not  peculiarities  at  all.  Bad  portrait- 
painting  is  not  uncommon.  Yet  each  face  has  its 
character  and  expression  unlike  every  other,  if  only 
the  painter  can  seize  it.  And  so,  in  those  great 
societies  of  men  which  we  call  nations,  there  is  a 
distinct  aspect  belonging  to  them  as  wholes,  which  the 
eye  catches  and  retains,  even  if  it  cannot  detect  its 
secret,  and  the  hand  is  unequal  to  reproduce  it.  Its 
reality  is  betrayed,  and  the  consciousness  of  its 
presence  revealed,  by  the  antipathies  of  nations,  and 
their  current  judgments  one  of  another. 

The  character  of  a  nation,  supposing  there  to  be 
such  a  thing,  must  be,  like  the  character  of  an  indi- 
vidual, the  compound  result  of  innumerable  causes. 
Eoughly,  it  may  be  said  to  be  the  compound  product 
of  the  natural  qualities  and  original  tendencies  of  a 
nation,  and  of  a  nation's  history.  The  natural  quali- 
ties and  tendencies  have  helped  largely  to  make  the 


52        CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  i 

history  out  of  circumstances  and  events,  partly,  at 
least,  independent  of  these  inherent  forces ;  and  the 
history  has  then  reacted  on  the  natural  qualities. 
What  a  nation  has  come  to  be  has  depended  on  the 
outfit  of  moral,  intellectual,  and  physical  gifts  and 
conditions  with  which  it  started  on  its  career  in  the 
world ;  and  then,  on  the  occurrences  and  trials  which 
met  it  in  its  course,  and  the  ways  in  which  it  dealt 
with  them ;  on  the  influences  which  it  welcomed  or 
resisted ;  on  critical  decisions ;  on  the  presence  and 
power  of  great  men  good  and  bad  ;  on  actions  which 
closed  the  old,  or  opened  the  new ;  on  the  feelings, 
assumptions,  and  habits  which  it  had  allowed  to  grow 
up  in  it.  All  this  needs  no  illustration.  The  Greeks 
never  could  have  been  what  they  have  been  in  their 
influence  on  human  history  if  they  had  not  started 
with  the  rich  endowments  with  which  nature  had 
furnished  them ;  but  neither  could  they  have  been 
what  they  were,  wonderfully  endowed  as  we  know 
them  to  have  been,  if  Athens  had  not  resisted  and 
conquered  at  Marathon  and  Salamis ;  if  those  victories 
had  been  mere  patriotic  assertions  of  independence 
and  liberty,  like  the  great  Swiss  victories  of  Morgarten 
and  Sempach,  and  had  not  stimulated  so  astonishingly 
Athenian  capacities  for  statesmanship,  for  literature, 
for  art ;  if  they  had  not  been  followed  by  the  his- 
torians, the  moralists,  the  poets  of  Athens ;  if  there 
had  been  no  Pericles,  no  Phidias,  no  Socrates ;  if  there 
had   been   no   Alexander   to   make  Greek   mind   and 


I  CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER        53 

Greek  letters  share  his  conquest  of  the  Eastern  world. 
So  with  the  nations  of  our  living  world.  The  sturdiest 
Englishman  must  feel,  not  only  that  his  country 
would  have  been  different,  but  he  might  himself  have 
been  other  than  he  is,  if  some  great  events  in  our 
history  had  gone  differently  ;  if  some  men  had  not 
lived,  and  if  others  had  not  died  when  they  did ;  if 
England  had  been  made  an  appendage  to  the  Spanish 
Netherlands  in  1588,  or  a  dependency  of  the  great 
French  King  in  1688,  or  of  the  great  French 
Emperor  in  1805  ;  if  Elizabeth  had  died  and  Mary 
lived.  It  is  idle  to  pursue  this  in  instances.  It  is 
obvious  that  a  nation's  character  is  what  it  is,  partly 
from  what  it  brought  with  it  on  the  stage  of  its 
history,  partly  from  what  it  has  done  and  suffered, 
partly  from  what  it  has  encountered  in  its  progress ; 
giving  to  an  external  or  foreign  element  a  home  and 
the  right  of  citizenship  within  it,  or  else  shutting  its 
doors  to  the  stranger,  and  treating  it  as  an  intruder 
and  an  enemy.  And  among  these  influences,  which 
have  determined  both  the  character  and  history  of 
nations,  one  of  the  most  important,  at  least  during 
the  centuries  of  which  the  years  are  reckoned  from 
the  birth  of  our  Lord,  has  been  religion. 

I  state  the  fact  here  generally  without  reference  to 
what  that  religion  is,  or  of  what  kind  its  influence 
may  have  been.  Everybody  knows  the  part  which 
Mahometanism  has  played,  and  is  still  playing,  in 
shaping  the  ideas,  the  manners,  and  the  history  of 


54        CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  i 

nations  in  Asia  and  Africa.  In  its  direct  and  un- 
ambiguous power  over  the  races  in  which  it  has  taken 
root,  and  in  the  broad  and  simple  way  in  which  it  has 
mastered  their  life  and  habits,  and  dominated  in  the 
direction  of  their  public  policy,  I  suppose  that  there  is 
no  religion  which  can  compare  with  it.  Its  demands, 
devotional  and  moral,  are  easily  satisfied  but  strictly 
enforced ;  and  to  a  genuine  Mahometan  a  religious 
war  is  the  most  natural  field  for  national  activity. 
As  has  befen  justly  said  ^  —  "It  has  consecrated 
despotism ;  it  has  consecrated  polygamy ;  it  has 
consecrated  slavery ; "  it  has  done  this  directly,  in 
virtue  of  its  being  a  religion,  a  religious  reform.  This 
is  an  obvious  instance  in  which  national  character 
and  national  history  would  not  have  been  what  they 
have  been  without  the  presence  and  persistent  in- 
fluence of  the  element  of  religion.  The  problem  is 
infinitely  more  complicated  in  the  case  of  those 
higher  races,  for  such  they  are,  which  escaped  or 
resisted  the  Mahometan  conquest ;  but  there,  too, 
the  power  of  this  great  factor  is  equally  undeniable, 
and  is  much  richer  and  more  varied  in  results,  though 
these  results  are  not  so  much  on  the  surface,  and 
are  often  more  difficult  to  assign  amid  the  pressure 
of  other  elements,  to  their  perhaps  distant  causes. 

To  come,  then,  to  my  subject  this  evening.     What 
have  been  the  effects  of  Christianity  on  what  we  call 
national  character  in  Eastern  Christendom  ?     I  must 
^  Freeman,  Saracens,  p.  246. 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER 


55 


remind  you,  once  more,  how  very  roughly  and  im- 
perfectly such  a  question  can  be  answered  here.  The 
field  of  investigation  is  immense,  and  in  part  very 
obscure ;  and  the  utmost  that  I  can  do  is,  if  possible, 
to  make  out  some  salient  points,  which  may  suggest, 
to  those  who  care  to  pursue  it,  the  beginnings  of 
further  inquiry.  I  propose  to  confine  myself  to  one 
race  of  the  great  family.  I  shall  keep  in  view  mainly 
the  Greek  race,  as  a  typical  specimen  of  Eastern 
Christendom.  I  am  quite  aware  how  much  I  narrow 
the  interest  of  the  subject  by  leaving  out  of  direct 
consideration  a  people  with  such  a  strongly  marked 
character,  with  such  a  place  in  the  world  now,  and 
such  a  probable  future,  as  the  great  Kussian  nation, 
— a  nation  which  may  be  said  to  owe  its  national 
enthusiasm,  its  national  convictions,  its  intense  coher- 
ence, and  the  terrible  strength  it  possesses,  to  its  being 
penetrated  with  religion.  But,  having  to  choose  a 
field  of  survey  with  reference  to  the  time  at  our 
disposal,  I  prefer  to  keep  to  the  Greek  race,  because 
the  impression  made  on  them  was  a  primary  and 
original  one,  and  was  communicated  by  them  to  other 
nations,  like  Eussia,  because  they  have  had  the 
longest  history,  and  because  their  history  has  been 
more  full  than  that  of  others  of  the  vicissitudes  of 
circumstance  and  fortune. 

It  requires  an  effort  in  us  of  the  West  to  call  up 
much  interest  in  the  Eastern  Christian  races  and  their 
fortunes.      They  are  very  different  from  us  in  great 


56        CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  i 

and  capital  points  of  character,  and  our  historians 
have  given  them  a  bad  name.  Many  persons  would 
regard  them  as  decisive  instances  of  the  failure  of 
Christianity  to  raise  men,  even  of  its  liability  under 
certain  conditions  to  be  turned  into  an  instrument  to 
corrupt  and  degrade  them.  The  Greeks  of  the  Lower 
Empire  are  taken  as  the  typical  example  of  these 
races,  and  the  Greeks  of  the  Lower  Empire  have 
become  a  byword  for  everything  that  is  false  and 
base.  The  Byzantine  was  profoundly  theological,  we 
are  told,  and  profoundly  vile.  And  I  suppose  the 
popular  opinion  of  our  own  day  views  with  small 
favour  his  modern  representatives,  and  is  ready  to 
contrast  them  to  their  disadvantage  with  the  Mahome- 
tan population  about  them.  There  is  so  much  truth 
in  this  view  that  it  is  apt,  as  in  many  other  cases,  to 
make  people  careless  of  the  injustice  they  commit  by 
taking  it  for  the  whole  truth.  Two  things,  as  it 
seems  to  me, — besides  that  general  ignorance  which  is 
the  mother  of  so  much  unfairness  and  scorn  in  all 
subjects,  —  have  especially  contributed  to  establish 
among  us  a  fixed  depreciation  of  all  that  derives  its 
descent  from  the  great  centres  of  Eastern  Christianity. 
One  is  the  long  division  between  Western  and  Eastern 
Christendom,  which  beginning  in  a  rift,  the  conse- 
quences of  which  no  one  foresaw,  and  which  all  were 
therefore  too  careless  or  too  selfish  to  close  when  it 
might  have  been  closed,  has  widened  in  the  course  of 
ages  into  a  yawning  gulf,  which  nothing  that  human 


I  CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER        57 

judgment  can  suggest  will  ever  fill  up,  and  which, 
besides  its  direct  quarrels  and  misfortunes,  has  brought 
with  it  a  train  of  ever-deepening  prejudices  and  anti- 
pathies, of  which  those  who  feel  them  often  know 
not  the  real  source.  Another  thing  which  has  con- 
tributed to  our  popular  disparagement  of  these  races 
is  the  enormous  influence  of  Gibbon's  great  History. 
It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  common  opinion 
of  educated  Englishmen  about  the  history  and  the 
character  of  everything  derived  from  Byzantium  or 
connected  with  it  is  based  on  this  History,  and,  in 
fact,  as  a  definite  opinion  dates  from  its  appearance. 
He  has  brought  out  with  incomparable  force  all  that 
was  vicious,  all  that  was  weak,  in  Eastern  Christendom. 
He  has  read  us  the  evil  lesson  of  caring  in  their 
history  to  see  nothing  else ;  of  feeling  too  much 
pleasure  in  the  picture  of  a  religion  discredited,  of  a 
great  ideal  utterly  and  meanly  baffled,  to  desire  to 
disturb  it  by  the  inconvenient  severity  of  accuracy 
and  justice.  But  the  authority  of  Gibbon  is  not  final. 
There  is,  after  all,  another  side  to  the  story.  In 
telling  it,  his  immense  and  usually  exact  knowledge 
gave  him  every  advantage  in  supporting  what  I  must 
call  the  prejudiced  conclusions  of  a  singularly  cold 
heart;  while  his  wit,  his  shrewdness,  and  his  pitiless 
sarcasm  gave  an  edge  to  his  learning,  and  a  force 
which  learning  has  not  always  had  in  shaping  the 
opinions  of  the  unlearned.  The  spell  of  Gibbon's 
genius  is  not  easy  to  break.     But  later  writers,  with 


58        CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  i 

equal  knowledge  and  with  a  more  judicial  and  more 
generous  temper,  have  formed  a  very  different  estimate 
of  the  Greek  Empii^e  and  the  Greek  race,  and  have 
corrected,  if  they  have  not  reversed,  his  sentence. 
Those  who  wish  to  be  just  to  a  form  of  society  which 
it  was  natural  in  him  to  disparage  will  pass  on  from 
his  brilliant  pages  to  the  more  equitable  and  conscien- 
tious, but  by  no  means  indulgent,  judgments  of  Mr. 
Finlay,  Mr.  Freeman,  and  Dean  Stanley. 

One  fact  alone  is  sufficient  to  engage  our  deep 
interest  in  this  race.  It  was  Greeks  and  people 
imbued  with  Greek  ideas  who  first  welcomed  Chris- 
tianity. It  was  in  their  language  that  it  first  spoke 
to  the  world,  and  its  first  home  was  in  Greek  house- 
holds and  in  Greek  cities.  It  was  in  a  Greek  atmo- 
sphere that  the  Divine  Stranger  from  the  East,  in 
many  respects  so  widely  different  from  all  that  Greeks 
were  accustomed  to,  first  grew  up  to  strength  and 
shape ;  first  showed  its  power  of  assimilating  and 
reconciling ;  first  showed  what  it  was  to  be  in  human 
society.  Its  earliest  nurslings  were  Greeks ;  Greeks 
first  took  in  the  meaning  and  measure  of  its  amazing 
and  eventful  announcements  ;  Greek  sympathies  first 
awoke  and  vibrated  to  its  appeals ;  Greek  obedience, 
Greek  courage,  Greek  suffering  first  illustrated  its 
new  lessons.  Had  it  not  first  gained  over  Greek 
mind  and  Greek  belief,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  it  would 
have  made  its  further  way.  And  to  that  first  wel- 
come   the    Greek    race    has    been     profoundly    and 


I  CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER        59 

unalterably  faithful.  They  have  passed  through 
centuries  for  the  most  part  of  adverse  fortune.  They 
have  been  in  some  respects  the  most  ill-treated  race 
in  the  world.  To  us  in  the  West,  at  least,  their 
Christian  life  seems  to  have  stopped  in  its  growth  at 
an  early  period;  and,  compared  with  the  energy  and 
fruitfulness  of  the  religious  principle  in  those  to  whom 
they  passed  it  on,  their  Christianity  disappoints,  per- 
haps repels  us.  But  to  their  first  faith,  as  it  grew  up, 
substantially  the  same,  in  Greek  society,  in  the  days 
of  Justin  and  Origen,  as  it  was  formulated  in  the 
great  Councils,  as  it  was  embodied  in  the  Liturgies, 
as  it  was  concentrated  and  rehearsed  in  perpetual 
worship,  as  it  was  preached  by  Gregory  and  Chry- 
sostom,  as  it  was  expounded  by  Basil,  Cyril  of 
Jerusalem,  and  John  of  Damascus,  as  it  prompted 
the  lives  of  saints  and  consecrated  the  triumphs  of 
martyrs,  they  still  cling,  as  if  it  was  the  wonder 
and  discovery  of  yesterday.  They  have  never  wearied 
of  it.  They  have  scarcely  thought  of  changing  its 
forms. 

The  Eoman  Conquest  of  the  world  found  the  Greek 
race,  and  the  Eastern  nations  which  it  had  influenced, 
in  a  low  and  declining  state  —  morally,  socially, 
politically.  The  Eoman  Empire,  when  it  fell,  left 
them  in  the  same  discouraging  condition,  and  suffering 
besides  from  the  degradation  and  mischief  wrought  on 
all  its  subjects  by  its  chronic  and  relentless  fiscal 
oppression.     The  Greek  of  Eoman  times  was  the  axi- 


6o        CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  i 

miration  and  envy  of  his  masters  for  his  cleverness 
and  the  glories  which  he  had  inherited ;  and  their 
scorn  for  his  utter  moral  incapacity  to  make  any  noble 
and  solid  use  of  his  gifts.  The  typical  Greek  of 
Juvenal's  satire  answered  to  the  typical  Frenchman  of 
Dr.  Johnson's  imitation  of  it,  the  ideal  Frenchman  of 
our  great-grandfathers  in  the  eighteenth  century.  He 
was  a  creature  of  inexhaustible  ingenuity,  but  without 
self-respect,  without  self-command  or  modesty,  capable 
of  everything  as  an  impostor  and  a  quack,  capable  of 
nothing  as  a  man  and  a  citizen.  There  was  no  trust- 
ing his  character  any  more  than  his  word :  "  unstable 
as  water,"  fickle  as  the  veering  wind,  the  slave  of  the 
last  new  thing,  whether  story,  or  theory,  or  temptation, 
— to  the  end  of  his  days  he  was  no  better  or  of  more 
value  than  a  child  in  the  serious  things  which  it  be- 
comes men  to  do.  Full  of  quickness  and  sensibility, 
open  to  every  impulse,  and  a  judge  of  every  argument, 
he  was  without  aim  or  steadiness  in  life,  ridiculous  in 
his  levity  and  conceit, — even  in  his  vice  and  corrup- 
tion more  approaching  to  the  naughtiness  of  a  reckless 
schoolboy  than  to  the  grave  and  deliberate  wickedness 
which  marked  the  Roman  sensualists.  These  were 
the  men  in  whose  childish  conceit,  childish  frivolity, 
childish  self-assertion,  St.  Paul  saw  such  dangers  to 
the  growth  of  Christian  manliness  and  to  tlie  unity  of 
the  Christian  body — the  idly  curious  and  gossiping 
men  of  Athens ;  the  vain  and  shamelessly  ostentatious 
Corinthians,  men  in  intellect,  but  in  moral  seriousness 


I  CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER        6\ 

babes ;  the  Ephesians,  "  like  children  carried  away 
with  every  blast  of  vain  teaching,"  the  victims  of  every 
impostor,  and  sport  of  every  deceit ;  the  Cretans,  pro- 
verbially, "  ever  liars,  evil  beasts,  slow  bellies ; "  the 
passionate,  volatile,  Greek-speaking  Celts  of  Asia,  the 
*'  foolish "  Galatians  ;  the  Greek-speaking  Christians 
of  Eome,  to  whom  St.  Paul  could  address  the  argument 
of  the  Epistle  to  the  Eomans,  and  whom  yet  he  judged 
it  necessary  to  warn  so  sternly  against  thinking  more 
highly  of  themselves  than  they  ought  to  think,  and 
against  setting  individual  self- pleasing  against  the 
claims  and  interests  of  the  community.  The  Greek 
of  the  Eoman  times  is  portrayed  in  the  special  warn- 
ings of  the  Apostolic  Epistles.  After  Apostolic  times 
he  is  portrayed  in  the  same  way  by  the  heathen 
satirist  Lucian,  and  by  the  Christian  preacher  Chry- 
sostom ;  and  such,  with  all  his  bad  tendencies,  aggra- 
vated by  almost  uninterrupted  misrule  and  oppression, 
the  Empire,  when  it  broke  up,  left  him.  The  prospects 
of  such  a  people,  amid  the  coming  storms,  were  dark. 
Everything,  their  gifts  and  versatility,  as  well  as  their 
faults,  threatened  national  decay  and  disintegration. 
How  should  they  stand  the  collision  with  the  simpler 
and  manlier  barbarians  from  the  northern  wastes,  from 
the  Arabian  wilderness,  from  the  Tartar  steppes  ? 
How  should  they  resist  the  consuming  and  absorbing 
enthusiasm  of  Mahometanism  ?  How  should  they 
endure,  century  after  century,  the  same  crushing  ill- 
treatment,  the   same  misgovernment  and  misfortune. 


62        CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  i 

without  at  last  breaking  up  and  dissolving  into  some- 
thing other  than  they  were,  and  losing  the  thread  of 
their  national  continuity  ? 

Look  at  the  same  group  of  races,  and  especially  at 
the  leading  and  typical  one  .of  the  group,  the  Greeks 
in  Europe  and  Asia,  after  the  impending  evils  had 
fallen,  after  century  after  century  had  passed  over  it  of 
such  history  as  nations  sink  under,  losing  heart  and 
union  and  hope.  Look  at  them  when  their  ill-fortune 
had  culminated  in  the  Ottoman  conquest  ;  look  at  them 
after  three  centuries  and  a  half  of  Ottoman  rule.  For 
they  have  not  perished.  In  the  first  place,  they  exist. 
They  have  not  disappeared  before  a  stronger  race  and 
a  more  peremptory  and  energetic  national  principle. 
They  have  not,  as  a  whole,  whatever  may  have  hap- 
pened partially,  melted  into  a  new  form  of  people 
along  with  their  conquerors.  They  have  resisted  the 
shocks  before  which  nations  apparently  stronger  have 
yielded  and,  as  nations,  have  disappeared.  And  next, 
they  have  not  only  resisted  dissolution  or  amalgama- 
tion, but  in  a  great  degree  change.  In  characteristic 
endowments,  in  national  and  proverbial  faults,  though 
centuries  of  hardship  and  degradation  have  doubtless 
told  on  the  former,  they  are  curiously  like  what  their 
fathers  were.  But  neither  faults,  nor  gifts  reinforcing 
and  giving  edge  to  faults,  have  produced  the  usual 
result.  Neither  their  over  -  cleverness,  nor  their 
lamentable  want  in  many  points  of  moral  elevation 
and  strength,  have  caused  the  decay  which   ends  in 


I         CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER        63 

national  death,  have  so  eaten  into  the  ties  which  keep 
a  society  together,  that  its  disorganised  elements  fly 
apart  and  form  new  combinations.  The  Mahometan 
conquest  has  made  large  inroads  on  the  Christian 
populations — in  some  cases,  as  in  Bosnia  and  parts  of 
Albania,  it  absorbed  it  entirely.  But  if  ever  nation- 
ality— the  pride  of  country,  the  love  of  home,  the  tie 
of  blood — was  a  living  thing,  it  has  been  alive  in  the 
Greek  race,  and  in  the  surrounding  races,  whatever 
their  origin  and  language,  which  it  once  influenced, 
and  which  shared  the  influences  which  acted  on  it. 
These  races  whom  the  Empire  of  the  Caesars  left  like 
scattered  sheep  to  the  mercy  of  the  barbarians,  lived 
through  a  succession  of  the  most  appalling  storms,  and 
kept  themselves  together,  holding  fast,  resolute  and 
unwavering,  amid  all  their  miseries  and  all  their  de- 
basement, to  the  faith  of  their  national  brotherhood. 
Nothing  less  promised  endurance  than  their  tempera- 
ment and  genius,  so  easily  moved  to  change,  so  quick 
to  the  perception  of  self-interest,  and  ready  to  discover 
its  paths.  Nothing  seemed  more  precarious  as  a  bond 
than  national  traditions  and  national  sympathies.  But 
at  the  end  of  our  modern  ages,  the  race  on  which 
Christianity  first  made  an  impression  still  survives, 
and,  though  scarred  by  disaster  and  deeply  wounded 
by  servitude,  is  now  looking  forward  to  a  new  and 
happier  career. 

What  saved  Greek  nationality — saved  it  in  spite  of 
the  terrible  alliance  with  external  misfortunes,  of  its 


64        CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  i 

own    deep  and  inherent  evils  ;  saved  it,  I  hope,  for 
much  better  days  than  it  has  ever  yet  seen — was  its 
Christianity.      It    is    wonderful   that,    even    with    it, 
Greek  society  should  have  resisted  the  decomposing 
forces  which  were  continually  at  work  round  it  and  in 
it ;  but  without  its  religion   it   must  have    perished. 
This  was  the  spring  of  that  obstinate  tenacious,  national 
life  which  persisted  in  living  on   though   all   things 
conspired    for    its    extinction ;   which   refused  to   die 
under  corruption   or   anarchy,   under    the    Crusader's 
sword,   under  the  Moslem  scimitar.     To  these  races 
Christianity  had  not  only  brought  a  religion,  when  all 
religion  was  worn   out   among  them    and  evaporated 
into  fables,  but  it  had  made  them — made  them  once 
more  a  people,  with  common  and  popular  interests  of 
the  highest  kind ;  raised  them,  from  mere  subjects  of 
the   Eoman   Empire,   lost  amid  its    crowd,   into    the 
citizens  of  a  great  society,  having  its  root  and  its  end 
above  this  world,  and  even  in  the  passage  through  this 
world  binding  men  by  the  most  awful  and  ennobling 
ties.      Christianity  was  the  first  friend  and  benefactor 
of  an  illustrious  race  in  the  day  of  its  decline  and  low 
estate ;  the  Greek  race  has  never  forgotten  that  first 
benefit,  and  its  unwavering  loyalty  has  been  the  bond 
which  has  kept  the  race  together  and  saved  it. 

I  think  this  is  remarkable.  Here  is  a  race  full  of 
flexibility  and  resource,  with  unusual  power  of  accom- 
modating itself  to  circumstances,  and  ready  to  do  so 
when  its  interest  prompted,  not  over- scrupulous,  quick 


I  CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER        65 

in  discovering  imposition  and  pitiless  in  laughing  at 
pretence — a  race  made,  as  it  would  seem,  to  bend 
easily  to  great  changes,  and  likely,  we  should  have 
thought,  to  lose  its  identity  and  be  merged  in  a 
stronger  and  sterner  political  association.  And  to 
this  race  Christianity  has  imparted  a  corporate  tough- 
ness and  permanence  which  is  among  the  most  pro- 
minent facts  of  history.  Say,  if  you  like,  that  it  is 
an  imperfect  form  of  Christianity ;  that  it  is  the 
Christianity  of  men  badly  governed  and  rudely  taught 
for  centuries,  enslaved  for  other  centuries.  Say,  if 
you  like,  that  its  success  has  been  very  qualified  in 
curing  the  race  of  its  ancient  and  characteristic  faults. 
Say,  too,  that  in  hardening  the  Greek  race  to  endure, 
it  has  developed  in  them  in  regard  to  their  religion, 
an  almost  Judaic  hardness  and  formalism  and  rigidity 
of  thought,  a  local  idea  of  religion  which  can  scarcely 
conceive  of  Christianity  beyond  its  seats  and  its  forms 
in  the  East.  Yet  the  fact  remains,  that  that  easy- 
going, pliable,  childishly  changeable  Greek  race  at 
whom  the  Eomans  sneered,  has  proved,  through  the 
deepest  misfortunes,  one  of  the  most  inflexible  nation- 
alities that  we  know  of;  and  that  the  root  of  this 
permanence  and  power  of  resisting  hostile  influences 
has  been  in  Christianity  and  the  Christian  Church. 

In  this  consolidation  by  Christianity  of  a  national 
character,  in  itself  least  adapted  to  become  anything 
stable  and  enduring,  we  may  trace  a  threefold  in- 
fluence : — 


66       CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  i 

1.  In  the  first  place,  Christianity  impressed  on  the 
minds  of  men  with  a  new  force  the  idea  of  the  eternal 
and  lasting.  Into  a  world  of  time  and  death  and 
change,  in  strange  and  paradoxical  contrast  with  it,  it 
had  come  announcing  a  one  everlasting  Kingdom  of 
God,  and  a  final  victory  over  the  worst  that  death  can 
do  on  man.  Eome  and  the  Empire  claimed  to  be 
eternal  and  unchanging ;  but  they  were  too  visibly 
liable,  as  other  human  greatness,  to  the  shocks  of 
fortune,  and  the  inevitable  course  of  mortal  decay. 
But  that  everlasting  order  which  was  the  foundation 
of  all  that  Christianity  supposed  and  taught,  that 
"  House  not  made  with  hands,"  that  "  Kingdom  which 
cannot  be  moved,"  that  Temple  of  souls  dwelt  in  by 
the  Eternal  Spirit  of  God,  that  Throne  of  the  world  on 
which  sate  One,  "  the  same  yesterday,  and  to-day,  and 
for  ever  " — this  was  out  of  the  reach  of  all  mutability. 
With  their  belief  in  Christianity,  the  believers  drank 
in  thoughts  of  fixedness,  permanence,  persistency,  con- 
tinuance, most  opposite  to  the  tendencies  of  their 
natural  temperament.  The  awful  seriousness  of  Chris- 
tianity, its  interpretation  of  human  life  and  intense 
appreciation  of  its  purpose,  deeply  affected,  if  it  could 
not  quell,  childish  selfishness  and  trifling;  its  iron 
entered  into  their  veins  and  mingled  with  their  blood. 
I  am  not  now  speaking  of  the  reforming  and  purify- 
ing effects  of  Christianity  on  individuals  :  this  is  not 
my  subject.  But  it  put  before  the  public  mind  a 
new  ideal  of  character ;  an  ideal  of  the  deepest  earnest- 


I       CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  67 

ness,  of  the  most  serious  purity,  of  unlimited  self- 
devotion,  of  the  tenderest  sympathy  for  the  poor  and 
the  unhappy,  of  pity  and  care  for  the  weak,  for  the 
sinner.  And  it  prevailed  on  the  public  mind  to 
accept  it,  in  exchange  for  more  ancient  ideals.  Even 
if  it  failed  to  wean  men  from  their  vices  and  lift 
them  to  its  own  height,  yet  it  gave  to  those  whom  it 
could  not  reform  a  new  respect  for  moral  greatness, 
a  new  view  of  the  capabilities  of  the  soul,  of  the 
possibilities  of  human  character.  It  altered  per- 
manently the  current  axioms  about  the  end  and  value 
of  human  life.  At  least  it  taught  them  patience,  and 
hardened  them  to  endure. 

2.  In  the  next  place,  the  spirit  of  brotherhood  in 
Christianity  singularly  fell  in  with  the  social  habits 
and  traditions  of  equality,  ineradicable  in  Greece,  and 
combined  with  them  to  produce  a  very  definite  feature 
in  the  national  character.  Greek  ideas  of  society 
and  government  were  always,  at  bottom,  essentially 
popular  ones :  Greek  revolutions  and  Greek  misfor- 
tunes, from  the  Peloponnesian  war  to  the  Eoman 
Conquest,  if  they  had  extinguished  all  hope  of  reahs- 
ing  any  more  those  democratic  institutions  under 
which  Athens  had  achieved  its  wonderful  but  short- 
lived greatness,  had  developed  and  strengthened  the 
feeling,  that  Greeks,  while  there  was  a  broad  Hne 
between  them  and  those  who  were  not  Greeks,  them- 
selves stood  all  on  the  same  social  level  one  with 
another,  and  that  only  personal  differences,  not  differ- 


68       CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  i 

ences  of  birth,  or  even  of  condition  or  wealth,  inter- 
fered with  the  natural  equality  which  was  assumed 
in  all  their  intercourse.  When  Christianity  came 
with  its  new  principle  of  a  .  unity,  so  high  and  so 
divine  as  to  throw  into  the  shade  all,  even  the  most 
real,  distinctions  among  men — "  Greek  and  Jew,  bar- 
barian and  Scythian,  bond  and  free,"  for  all  were  one 
in  Christ — and  when  in  the  Christian  Church  the 
slave  was  thought  as  precious  as  the  free  man  in  the 
eyes  of  his  Father  above,  as  much  a  citizen  of  the 
heavenly  polity  and  an  heir  of  its  immortality — then 
the  sense  of  popular  unity  and  of  common  and  equal 
interests  in  the  whole  body,  which  always  had  been 
strong  in  Greeks,  received  a  seal  and  consecration, 
which  has  fixed  it  unalterably  in  the  national  char- 
acter. This  personal  equality  existed,  and  could  not 
be  destroyed,  under  the  despotic  governments  by 
which,  from  the  time  of  the  Eoman  Empire  till  the 
emancipation  of  Greece  from  the  Turks,  in  one  shape 
or  another,  the  nation  has  been  ruled.  It  marks 
Greek  social  relations  very  observably  to  this  day. 

3.  Finally,  Christianity,  the  religion  of  hope,  has 
made  the  Greek  race,  in  the  face  of  the  greatest 
adversities,  a  race  of  hope.  In  its  darkest  and  most 
unpromising  hours,  it  has  hoped  against  hope.  On 
the  bronze  gates  of  St.  Sophia,  at  Constantinople,  may 
still  be  seen, — at  least  it  might  be  seen  some  years 
ago, — the  words,  placed  there  by  its  Christian  builder, 
and  left  there  by  the  scornful  ignorance  or  indifference 


I  CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER         69 

of  the  Ottomans — I.  X.  NIK  A,  Jesus  Christ  conquers. 
It  is  the  expression  of  that  unshaken  assurance  which 
in  the  lowest  depths  of  humihation  has  never  left  the 
Christian  races  of  the  East,  that  sooner  or  later  theirs 
is  the  winning  cause.  They  never  have  doubted  of 
their  future.  The  first  greeting  with  which  Greek 
salutes  Greek  on  Easter  morning,  Xpco-rb^  avearr], 
Christ  is  risen,  accompanied  by  the  Easter  kiss,  and 
answered  by  the  response,  oXtjOm^;  dvea-TTj,  He  is  risen 
indeed,  is  both  the  victorious  cry  of  mortality  over 
the  vanquished  grave,  and  also  the  symbol  of  a  na- 
tional brotherhood,  the  brotherhood  of  a  suffering 
race,  bound  together  by  their  common  faith  in  a 
deliverer. 

This,  it  seems  to  me,  Christianity  did  for  a  race 
which  had  apparently  lived  its  time,  and  had  no 
future  before  it — the  Greek  race  in  the  days  of  the 
Caesars.  It  created  in  them,  in  a  new  and  character- 
istic degree,  national  endurance,  national  fellowship 
and  sympathy,  national  hope.  It  took  them  in  the 
unpromising  condition  in  which  it  found  them  under 
the  Empire,  with  their  light,  sensual,  childish  exist- 
ence, their  busy  but  futile  and  barren  restlessness, 
their  hfe  of  enjoyment  or  of  suffering,  as  the  case 
might  be,  but  in  either  case  purposeless  and  unmean- 
ing ;  and  by  its  gift  of  a  religion  of  seriousness,  con- 
viction, and  strength  it  gave  them  a  new  start  in 
national  history.  It  gave  them  an  Empire  of  their 
own,  which,  undervalued    as  it   is   by  those  familiar 


70        CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  i 

with  the  ultimate  results  of  Western  history,  yet  with- 
stood the  assaults  before  which,  for  the  moment, 
Western  civilisation  sank,  and  which  had  the  strength 
to  last  a  life — a  stirring  and  eventful  life — of  ten 
centuries.  The  Greek  Empire,  with  all  its  evils  and 
weaknesses,  was  yet  in  its  time  the  only  existing 
image  in  the  world  of  a  civilised  state.  It  had  arts, 
it  had  learning,  it  had  military  science  and  power ;  it 
was,  for  its  day,  the  one  refuge  for  peaceful  industry. 
It  had  a  place  which  we  could  ill  afford  to  miss  in 
the  history  of  the  world.  Gibbon,  we  know,  is  no 
lover  of  anything  Byzantine,  or  of  anything  Christian  ; 
but  look  at  that  picture  which  he  has  drawn  of  the 
Empire  in  the  tenth  century — that  dark  century  when 
all  was  so  hopeless  in  the  West, — read  the  pages  in 
which  he  yields  to  the  gorgeous  magnificence  of  the 
spectacle  before  him,  and  describes  not  only  the  riches, 
the  pomp,  the  splendour,  the  elaborate  ceremony  of 
the  Byzantine  Court  and  the  Byzantine  capital,  but 
the  comparative  prosperity  of  the  provinces,  the  sys- 
tematic legislation,  the  administrative  experience  and 
good  sense  with  which  the  vast  machine  was  kept 
going  and  its  wealth  developed,  its  military  science 
and  skill,  the  beauty  and  delicacy  of  its  manufactures, 
— and  then  consider  what  an  astonishing  contrast  to 
aU  else  in  those  wild  times  was  presented  by  the 
stability,  the  comparative  peace,  the  culture,  the 
liberal  pursuits  of  this  great  State,  and  whether  we 
have  not  become  blind  to  what  it  was,  and  appeared  to 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER        71 

he,  when  it  actually  existed  in  the  world  of  which  it 
was  the  brilliant  centre,  by  confusing  it  in  our  thoughts 
with  the  miseries  of  its  overthrow  : — 

"These  princes,"  he  says,  "might  assert  with 
dignity  and  truth,  that  of  all  the  monarchs  of  Chris- 
tendom they  possessed  the  greatest  city,  the  most 
ample  revenue,  the  most  flourishing  and  populous 
state.  .  .  .  The  subjects  of  their  Empire  were  still 
the  most  dexterous  and  diligent  of  nations ;  their 
country  was  blessed  by  nature  with  every  advantage 
of  soil,  climate,  and  situation ;  and  in  the  support  and 
restoration  of  the  arts,  their  patient  and  peaceful 
temper  was  more  useful  than  the  warlike  spirit  and 
feudal  anarchy  of  Europe.  The  provinces  which  still 
adhered  to  the  Empire  were  repeopled  and  enriched  by 
the  misfortunes  of  those  which  were  irrecoverably  lost. 
Erom  the  yoke  of  the  Caliphs,  the  Catholics  of  Syria, 
Egypt,  and  Africa  retired  to  the  allegiance  of  their 
prince,  to  the  society  of  their  brethren :  the  moveable 
wealth,  which  eludes  the  search  of  oppression,  accom- 
panied and  alleviated  their  exile ;  and  Constantinople 
received  into  her  bosom  the  fugitive  trade  of  Alex- 
andria and  Tyre.  The  chiefs  of  Armenia  and  Scythia, 
who  fled  from  hostile  or  religious  persecution,  were 
hospitably  entertained,  their  followers  were  encouraged 
to  build  new  cities  and  cultivate  waste  lands.  Even 
the  barbarians  who  had  seated  themselves  in  arms 
in  the  territory  of  the  Empire  were  gradually  re- 
claimed to  the  laws  of  the  church  and  state."     "The 


72        CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  i 

wealth  of  the  province,"  he  proceeds,  describing  one 
of  them,  "  and  the  trust  of  the  revenue  were  founded 
on  the  fair  and  plentiful  produce  of  trade  and  manu- 
factures ;  and  some  symptoms  of  a  Hberal  policy  may 
be  traced  in  a  law  which  exempts  from  all  personal 
taxes  the  mariners  of  the  province,  and  all  workmen 
in  parchment  and  purple." 

And  he  goes  on  to  describe,  with  that  curious 
pursuit  of  detail  in  which  he  delights,  the  silk  looms 
and  their  products,  and  to  trace  the  silk  manufacture, 
from  these  Greek  looms,  as  it  passed  through  the 
hands  of  captive  Greek  workmen,  transported  by  the 
Normans  to  Palermo,  and  from  thence  was  emulously 
taken  up  by  the  northern  Italian  cities,  to  the  work- 
shops of  Lyons  and  Spitalfields.  Who  would  think 
that  he  was  describing  what  we  so  commonly  think  of 
as  the  wretched  and  despicable  Lower  Greek  Empire, 
without  strength  or  manliness ;  or  that  the  rich 
province  is  what  the  Turks  made  into  the  desolate 
Morea  ? 

We  are  accustomed  to  think  only  of  its  corruption 
and  pedantry,  its  extravagant  disputes,  its  court  in- 
trigues and  profligacies,  its  furious  factions.  But 
there  was  really  no  want  of  heroic  men  and  noble 
achievements  to  show  in  the  course  of  its  annals. 
Even  Gibbon  tells  us,  though  he  tells  us,  as  usual, 
with  a  sneer,  of  "intrepid"^  patriarchs  of  Constan- 
tinople, whom  we  speak  of  as  mere  slaves  of  despotism, 

^  Chap,  xlviii.  vol.  vi.  pp.  105,  106. 


I  CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER        73 

repeating  towards  captains  and  emperors,  impatient 
with  passion,  or  in  the  flush  of  criminal  success,  the 
bold  rebukes  of  John  the  Baptist  and  St.  Ambrose. 
And  these  captains  and  emperors  appear,  many  of 
them,  even  in  his  disparaging  pages,  as  no  ordinary 
men.  There  were  lines  of  rulers  in  those  long  ages 
not  unworthy  to  rank  with  the  great  royal  houses  of 
the  West.  There  were  men,  with  deep  and  miserable 
faults  no  doubt,  but  who  yet,  if  their  career  had  been 
connected  with  our  history,  would  have  been  famous 
among  us.  Belisarius,  Heraclius,  Leo  the  Isaurian, — 
the  Basilian,  the  Comnenian  line, — have  a  full  right 
to  a  high  place  among  the  rulers  and  the  saviours  of 
nations.  The  First  and  the  Second  Basil  of  the  Mace- 
donian line,  the  Lawgiver,  and  the  Conqueror:  the 
Comnenian  dynasty ; — Alexius,  who  "  in  a  long  reign 
of  thirty-seven  years  subdued  and  pardoned  the  envy 
of  his  equals,  restored  the  laws  of  public  and  private 
order,"  cultivated  the  arts  of  wealth  and  science,  "  and 
enlarged  the  limits  of  the  Empire  in  Europe  and 
Asia  "  ; — John,  "  under  whom  innocence  had  nothing  to 
fear  and  merit  everything  to  hope,"  and  "  whose  only 
defect  was  the  frailty  of  noble  minds,  the  love  of 
military  glory  "  ; — Manuel,  "  educated  in  the  silk  and 
purple  of  the  East,  but  possessed  of  the  iron  temper 
of  a  soldier,  not  easily  to  be  paralleled,  except  in  the 
lives  of  Eichard  I.  of  England  and  Charles  XII.  of 
Sweden  "  : — I  am  quoting  in  each  instance  the  epithets 
and  judgment  of  Gibbon — these  are  men  whom  a  dif- 


74        CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL   CHARACTER  i 

ference  of  taste  and  historical  traditions  makes  us 
undervalue  as  Greeks  of  the  Lower  Empire.  Let  us 
not  be  ungrateful  to  them.  Unconquered,  when  the 
rest  of  the  Empire  fell  before  the  new  powers  of  the 
world,  Byzantium  kept  alive  traditions  of  learning,  of 
scholarship,  of  law  and  administration,  of  national 
unity,  of  social  order,  of  industry,  which  those  troubled 
and  dangerous  times  could  ill  afford  to  lose.  To  the 
improvable  barbarians  of  the  North,  to  whom  Old 
Rome  had  yielded,  succeeded  the  unim]provable  bar- 
barians of  the  East  and  Central  Asia,  and  against 
them,  Saracens,  Mongols,  Turks,  the  New  Eome  was 
the  steady  and  unbroken  bulwark,  behind  which  the 
civilisation  of  Europe,  safe  from  its  mortal  foes,  slowly 
recovered  and  organised  itself.  Alaric's  Goths  at  the 
sack  of  Eome,  Platoff's  Cossacks  at  the  occupation  of 
Paris,  were  not  greater  contrasts  to  all  that  is  meant 
by  civilisation  than  were  the  Latins  of  the  Eirst  and 
Fourth  Crusade,  the  bands  of  Godfrey  de  Bouillon, 
Bohemond,  and  Tancred,  and  those  of  the  Bishop  of 
Soissons,  the  Count  of  Elanders,  and  the  Marquis  of 
Montferrat,  in  the  great  capital  of  Eastern  Christendom, 
which  they  wondered  at  and  pillaged.  "V^Tiat  saved 
hope  for  ages,  on  the  edge  of  the  world  which  was  to 
be  the  modern  one,  was  the  obstinate  resistance  of 
Christian  nationality  to  the  mounting  tide  of  Asiatic 
power. 

But  it  was  when  the  Empire  perished  that  it  fully 
appeared   how   deeply  Christianity   had  modified  the 


I  CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER        75 

national  character.  All  the  world  was  looking  for- 
ward to  the  impossibility  of  that  character  holding  its 
own  against  the  pressure  of  Mahometanism,  and  to 
the  disappearance  by  slavery,  or  forced  conversion,  of 
the  representatives,  in  the  East,  of  the  Christian 
family.  But  the  expectation  has  been  falsified.  It 
had  not  entered  into  the  calculation  how  much  of 
stubborn,  unyielding  faith  and  strength  Christianity 
had  introduced  beneath  the  surface  of  that  apparently 
supple  and  facile  Greek  nature.  The  spring  of  life 
was  too  strong  to  be  destroyed ;  and  now,  after  steel 
and  fire  have  done  their  worst,  fresh  and  vigorous 
branches  are  shooting  up  from  the  unexhausted  root- 
stock.  Then,  when  the  greatness  of  Constantinople 
was  gone,  it  appeared  how  the  severe  side  of  Chris- 
tianity, with  its  patience  and  its  hopefulness,  had 
left  its  mark  on  Greek  character,  naturally  so  little 
congenial  to  such  lessons.  Then  it  appeared  what 
was  the  difference  between  a  philosophy  and  litera- 
ture, and  a  religion  and  life.  Then,  when  philosophy 
and  literature,  the  peculiar  glories  of  the  Greek  race, 
may  be  said  to  have  perished,  was  seen  what  was 
the  power  of  the  ruder  and  homelier  teaching — about 
matters  of  absorbing  interest,  the  unseen  world,  the 
destiny  of  man — of  teachers  who  believed  their  own 
teaching,  and  lived  and  died  accordingly.  Then  was 
seen  on  the  whole  nation  the  fruit  of  the  unpretend- 
ing Christian  virtues  which  grow  from  great  Christian 
doctrines,  the  Cross,  the  Eesurrection — compassionate- 


76        CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  i 

ness,  humbleness   of  mind,  self-conquest,  zeal,  purity. 
Self-sacrifice  became  the  most  natural  of  duties — self- 
sacrifice,  in  all  its  forms,  wise  and  unwise,  noble  and 
extravagant,   ascetic  renunciation    of  the  world,  con- 
fessorship   and   dying   for   the  truth  as  men  died  for 
their  country,  a  lifelong  struggle  of  toil  and  hardship 
for  a  cause  not  of  this  world.      The  Kves  of  great  men 
profoundly  and  permanently  influence  national  char- 
acter ;    and   the   great   men    of   later    Greek   memory 
are   saints.     They  belong  to   the   people   more   than 
emperors   and   warriors ;    for   the  Church    is    of    the 
people.      Greeks  saw  their  own  nature  and  their  own 
gifts  elevated,  corrected,  transformed,  glorified,  in  the 
heroic    devotion    of    Athanasius,    who,    to     all     their 
familiar  qualities  of  mind,  brought  a  tenacity,  a  sober- 
ness, a  height  and  vastness  of  aim,  an  inflexibihty  of 
purpose,  which  they  admired  the  more  because  they 
were  just  the  powers  in  which  the  race  failed.      They 
saw   the   eloquence   in   which   they   delighted    revive 
with   the   fire   and   imagination  and   piercing  sarcasm 
of  Chrysostom,  and  their  hearts  kindled  in  them  when 
they  saw  that  he  was  one  of  those  who  can  dare  and 
suffer   as  well  as   speak,  and   that  the   preacher   who 
had  so  sternly  rebuked  the  vices  of  the  multitudes  at 
Antioch   and   Constantinople  was   not    afraid    of    the 
consequences  of  speaking  the  truth  to  an  Empress  at 
an  Imperial  Court.      The  mark  which  such  men  left 
on  Greek  society  and  Greek  character  has  not  been 
effaced  to  this  day,  even  by  the  melancholy  examples 


I  CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER         77 

of  many  degenerate  successors.  They  have  sown  a 
seed  which  has  more  than  once  revived,  and  which 
still  has  in  it  the  promise  of  life  and  progress. 

Why,  if  Christianity  affected  Greek  character  so 
profoundly,  did  it  not  do  more  ?  Why,  if  it  cured  it 
of  much  of  its  instability  and  trifling,  did  it  not  also 
cure  it  of  its  falsehood  and  dissimulation  ?  Why,  if 
it  impressed  the  Greek  mind  so  deeply  with  the 
reality  of  the  objects  of  faith,  did  it  not  also  check 
the  vain  inquisitiveness  and  spirit  of  disputatiousness 
and  sophistry,  which  filled  Greek  Church  history  with 
furious  wranglings  about  the  most  hopeless  problems  ? 
Why,  if  it  could  raise  such  admiration  for  unselfish- 
ness and  heroic  nobleness,  has  not  this  admiration 
borne  more  congenial  fruit  ?  Why,  if  heaven  was 
felt  to  be  so  great  and  so  near,  was  there  in  real  life 
such  coarse  and  mean  worldliness  ?  Why,  indeed  ? — 
why  have  not  the  healing  and  renovating  forces  of 
which  the  world  is  now,  as  it  has  ever  been,  full, 
worked  out  their  gracious  tendencies  to  their  complete 
and  natural  effect  ?  It  is  no  question  specially  be- 
longing to  this  part  of  the  subject :  in  every  other  we 
might  make  the  same  inquiry,  and  I  notice  it  only 
lest  I  should  be  thought  to  have  overlooked  it. 
"  Christianity,"  it  has  been  said,  "  varies  according  to 
the  nature  on  which  it  falls."  That  is,  in  modern 
philosophical  phrase,  what  we  are  taught  in  the  par- 
able of  the  Sower.  It  rests  at  last  with  man's  will 
and  moral  nature  how  far  he  will,  honestly  and  un- 


78        CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  i 

reservedly,  yield  to  the  holy  influences  which  he 
welcomes,  and  let  them  have  their  "perfect  work." 
But  if  the  influence  of  Christianity  on  Greek  society 
has  been  partial,  if  it  has  not  weaned  it  from  some  of 
its  most  characteristic  and  besetting  sins,  it  has  done 
enough  to  keep  it  from  destruction.  It  has  saved  it ; 
and  this  is  the  point  on  which  I  insist.  Profoundly, 
permanently,  as  Christianity  affected  Greek  character, 
there  was  much  in  that  character  which  Christianity 
failed  to  reach,  much  that  it  failed  to  correct,  much 
that  was  obstinately  refractory  to  influences  which, 
elsewhere,  were  so  fruitful  of  goodness  and  greatness. 
The  East,  as  well  as  the  West,  has  still  much  to  learn 
from  that  religion,  which  each  too  exclusively  claims 
to  understand,  to  appreciate,  and  to  defend.  But 
what  I  have  tried  to  set  before  you  is  this :  the 
spectacle  of  a  great  civilised  nation,  which  its  civilisa- 
tion could  not  save,  met  by  Christianity  in  its  hour  of 
peril,  filled  with  moral  and  spiritual  forces  of  a  new 
and  unknown  nature,  arrested  in  its  decay  and 
despair,  strengthened  to  endure  amid  prolonged 
disaster,  guarded  and  reserved  through  centuries  of 
change  for  the  reviving  hopes  and  energies  of  happier 
days.  To  a  race  bewildered  with  sophistries,  and 
which  by  endless  disputings  had  come  to  despair  of 
any  noble  conduct  of  life,  Christianity  solved  its 
questions,  by  showing  it  in  concrete  examples  how 
to  live  and  to  walk ;  how,  in  the  scale  of  souls,  the 
lowest   might  be  joined  to    the  highest.     Into  men, 


I  CHRISTIANITY  AND  NATIONAL  CHARACTER        79 

whom  their  own  passions  and  subtlety  had  condemned 
to  listless  moral  indifference,  it  breathed  enthusiasm ; 
the  high  practical  enthusiasm  of  truth  and  a  good  life. 
And  for  a  worship,  poetically  beautiful,  but  scarcely 
affecting  to  be  more,  it  substituted  the  magnificent 
eloquence  of  devotion  and  faith,  the  inspired  Psalms, 
the  majestic  Liturgies.  It  changed  life,  by  bringing 
into  it  a  new  idea, — the  idea  of  holiness,  with  its 
shadow,  sin.  That  the  Greek  race,  which  connects  us 
with  some  of  the  noblest  elements  of  our  civilisation, 
is  still  one  of  the  living  races  of  Europe,  that  it  was 
not  trampled,  scattered,  extinguished,  lost,  amid  the 
semi-barbarous  populations  of  the  East,  that  it  can 
look  forward  to  a  renewed  career  in  the  great  com- 
monwealth of  Christendom — this  it  owes  mainly  to 
its  religion. 

What  great  changes  of  national  character  the  Latin 
races  owed  to  Christianity  will  be  the  inquiry  of  the 
next  lecture. 


LECTUEE    II 

CHEISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  EACES 

Under  the  discipline  of  Christianity  in  the  Eastern 
Church  the  Christians  of  the  East  were  trained  to 
endurance,  to  a  deep  sense  of  brotherhood,  to  a  faith 
which  could  not  be  shaken  in  great  truths  about  God 
and  about  man,  to  the  recognition  of  a  high  moral 
ideal,  to  a  purer  standard  of  family  and  social  life,  to 
inextinguishable  hope.  They  learned  to  maintain, 
under  the  most  adverse  and  trying  circumstances,  a 
national  existence,  which  has  lasted  more  than  fifteen 
centuries.  They  have  been  kept,  without  dying,  with- 
out apostatising,  without  merging  their  nationality  in 
something  different,  till  at  last  better  days  seem  at 
hand ;  and  to  welcome  these  days  there  is  vigour  and 
elasticity,  a  strong  spirit  of  self-reliance,  even  of  ambi- 
tion. But  what  appears,  at  least  to  us,  distant  and 
probably  superficial  observers,  is  this.  Their  religion 
has  strengthened  and  elevated  national  character:  it 
seems  to  have  done  less  to  expand  and  refine  it.  At 
any  rate,  we  do  not  see  the  evidence  of  it  in  what  is 

80 


II  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  8i 

almost  the  only  possible  evidence  of  it  to  strangers,  in 
a  rich  and  varied  literature.  To  their  ancient  trea- 
sures, to  the  wisdom  and  eloquence  of  the  great 
Christian  teachers  and  moralists  of  the  early  cen- 
turies, such  as  Basil  and  Chrysostom,  the  Greeks 
have  added  nothing  which  can  be  put  on  a  level  with 
them ;  nothing  worth  speaking  of  in  secular  litera- 
ture ;  nothing  of  real  poetry ;  nothing  with  the  mark 
on  it  of  original  observation  or  genius ;  nothing  which 
has  passed  local  limits  to  interest  the  world  without. 
Learning  of  a  certain  kind  they  have  ever  maintained. 
Up  to  the  capture  of  Constantinople  by  the  Ottomans, 
Greek  learning  certainly  did  not  contrast  unfavourably 
with  the  learning  of  the  West;  and  it  was  Greek 
teachers  and  scholars,  flying  from  the  Ottoman  sword 
and  the  Ottoman  tyranny,  who  brought  Greek  letters 
to  the  schools,  the  Universities,  and  the  printing 
presses  of  the  eager  and  curious  West.  But  it  was 
all  ancient  learning,  or  intellectual  work  connected 
with  ancient  learning.  There  was  little  to  show  the 
thought,  the  aspirations,  the  feelings,  the  character  of 
the  present  time.  All  seems  dry,  stiff,  pompous, 
pedantic,  in  curious  contrast  to  the  naturalness,  the 
perception  of  the  realities  of  character,  the  humour, 
the  pathos,  which  are  so  often  seen  in  the  roughest 
monastic  writings  of  the  same  period  in  the  West. 
Echoes  of  what  seems  native  poetry,  the  original 
expression,  more  or  less  graceful  or  pathetic,  of  feel- 
ing  and   imagination,   come   to   us   from    portions   of 


82  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  ii 

Eastern  Christendom — from  Kussia,  from  Servia,  per- 
haps from  other  Sclavonic  races ;  but  little  from 
Greece  itself  Besides  a  few  fragments,  marked 
occasionally  by  genuine  touches  of  feeling,  its  national 
poetry,  exclusive  of  the  noble  but  often  florid  ecclesi- 
astical hymns,  consists  mainly  of  Klephtic  ballads, 
recording  feats  of  prowess  against  the  Turks.  In 
curious  contrast  with  the  versatility  of  the  old  Greeks, 
the  character  of  their  later  representatives,  with  all 
their  liveliness,  has  in  it,  along  with  its  staunchness 
and  power  of  resistance,  a  stereotyped  rigidity  and 
uniformity— wanting  play,  wanting  growth.  Looked 
at  by  the  side  of  their  Western  brethren,  they  re- 
semble the  shapes  and  branch  systems  of  the  ever- 
green pines  and  firs  of  their  own  mountains,  so  hardy, 
so  stern,  often  nobly  beautiful,  but  always  limited  in 
their  monotonous  forms,  when  compared  with  the 
varied  outline  and  the  luxuriant  leafage,  ever  chang- 
ing, ever  renewed,  of  the  chestnuts  of  the  Apennine 
forests,  or  of  the  oaks  and  elms  of  our  English 
fields. 

It  is  in  Western  Christendom  that  we  must  look 
for  the  fuller  development  of  the  capacities  and  the 
originality  of  man,  in  those  broad  varieties  of  them, 
which  we  call  national  character.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  in  the  later  ages  of  the  world  men  and 
nations  have  been  more  enterprising,  more  aspiring, 
more  energetic  in  the  West  than  in  the  East ;  that 
their  history  has  been  more  eventful,  their  revolutions 


II  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  83 

graver;  that  they  have  aimed  at  more,  hoped  for 
more,  ventured  on  more.  And  the  subject  of  my 
lecture  to-night  is  the  effects  of  Christianity  on  the 
character  of  what  are  called  the  Latin  races,  especially 
in  Italy  and  France. 

The  Latin  races  occupy  the  ground  where  Eoman 
civilisation  of  the  times  of  the  Empire  had  its  seat 
and  main  influence.  When  the  Empire  fell,  its  place 
and  local  home  were  taken  by  nations,  closely  con- 
nected by  blood  and  race  with  its  old  subjects,  which 
were  to  become,  in  very  different  ways,  two  of  the 
foremost  of  our  modern  world.  We  know  them  well, 
and  they  have  both  of  them  been  very  intimately 
connected  with  us,  in  our  history,  and  in  the  progress 
of  our  society  and  our  ideas.  With  one  we  have 
had  a  rivalry  of  centuries,  which  yet  has  not  pre- 
vented much  sympathy  between  us,  or  the  manifold 
and  deep  influence  of  one  great  rival  on  the  in- 
tellectual and  the  political  life  of  the  other.  To 
Italy,  long  bound  to  us  by  the  ties  of  a  great 
ecclesiastical  organisation,  we  have,  since  those  ties 
were  broken,  been  hardly  less  closely  bound  by  the 
strong  interest  created  by  Italian  literature  and  art, 
and  by  the  continual  personal  contact  with  the 
country  of  a  stream  of  travellers;  We  all  of  us  form 
an  idea,  more  or  less  accurate  and  comprehensive,  of 
what  Ereuchmen  and  Italians  are  like.  Take  the 
roughest  and  rudest  shape  of  this  idea,  so  that  it  has 
any   feature   and   distinctness  about  it,  and  compare 


84  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  ii 

it  with  whatever  notions  we  can  reach  of  the  people 
of  the  same  countries  in  the  days  of  the  Empire; 
with  the  notion  which  scholars  can  derive  of  them 
from  reading  their  letters,  their  poetry,  serious  and 
gay,  their  plays,  their  laws,  their  philosophical  essays, 
their  political  treatises, — with  the  notion  which  those 
who  are  not  scholars  get  of  them  from  our  own 
historical  writers.  Two  strong  impressions,  it  seems 
to  me,  result  from  such  a  comparison.  The  first  is, 
how  strangely  modern  in  many  ways  these  ancient 
Eomans  look  ;  what  strangely  modern  thoughts  they 
think;  what  strangely  modern  words  they  say.  But 
then,  when  we  have  realised  how  near  in  many  ways 
their  civilisation  and  culture  brought  them  to  our 
own  days,  the  next  feeling  is  how  vast  and  broad 
is  the  interval  which  lies  between  our  conceptions, 
when  we  think  of  French  or  Italian  character,  its 
moral  elements,  habits,  assumptions,  impulses,  its 
governing  forces,  with  the  ways  in  which  it  exhibits 
itself,  and  when  we  think  of  the  contemporaries  of  Cicero, 
of  Seneca,  of  Marcus  Aurelius.  Much  is  like  ;  much  in 
the  modern  form  recalls  the  past ;  but  in  the  discrimi- 
nating and  essential  points,  how  great  a  difference. 

I  am  not  going  to  attempt  anything  like  a  survey 
and  comparison,  even  of  the  most  general  kind,  of 
these  contrasted  characters.  All  I  propose  to  do  is 
to  take  one  or  two  important  points  of  difference 
between  them,  and  trace,  if  possible,  where  and  from 
what  causes  the  differences  arose. 


II  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  85 

Let  us,  then,  take  the  two  chief  peoples  of  what 
is  called — what  they  themselves  call — the  Latin  race ; 
the  Italians  and  the  French.  Eome  had  so  impressed 
her  own  stamp  on  the  populations  which  inherited 
what  was  then  called  Gaul,  that  no  revolutions  have 
effaced  it.  Though  there  has  been  since  the  fall  of 
the  Empire  so  large  an  infusion  into  them  of  Teutonic 
blood,  and  the  name  by  which  they  are  now  known 
is  a  Teutonic  one,  yet  Latin  influence  has  proved 
the  prevailing  and  the  dominant  one  among  them  ; 
a  language  of  Latin  stock  and  affinities  expresses 
and  controls  their  thoughts  and  associations :  in  the 
great  grouping  of  modern  nations,  France,  as  a  whole, 
goes  with  those  of  her  provinces  which  geographically 
belong  to  the  South,  and  claim  a  portion  of  the 
Mediterranean  shore.  Not  forgetting  their  immense 
differences,  still  we  may  for  our  purpose  class  these 
two  great  nations  together,  in  contrast  with  the 
people  who,  before  them,  in  the  great  days  of  Eome, 
occupied  the  south  of  Europe,  and  ruled  on  the 
Mediterranean.  And  in  those  times,  when  Gaul  was 
still  but  a  pro\dnce,  we  must  take  its  provincial 
society,  as  represented  by  the  better-known  society 
of  the  governing  race  and  of  the  seat  of  empire, 
whose  ideas  and  manners  that  provincial  society 
undoubtedly  reflected  and  copied.  Comparing,  then, 
the  Italians  and  French  of  modern  times  and 
history  with  the  Eomans  of  the  Imperial  city,  of  the 
Imperial  peninsula,  and  of  the  provinces,  one  striking 


86  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  ii 

difference  seems  at  once  to  present  itself  before  our 
eyes. 

1.  It  is  the  different  sphere  and  space  in  national 
character  occupied  by  the  affections.  I  use  the  word 
in  the  widest  sense,  and  without  reference  now  to  the 
good  or  bad,  the  wise  or  unwise,  the  healthy  or  morbid 
exercise  of  them.  But  I  observe  that  in  the  Eoman 
character  the  affections  —  though  far,  indeed,  from 
being  absent,  for  how  could  they  be  in  a  race  with 
such  high  points  of  human  nobleness  ?  —  were  yet 
habitually  allowed  but  little  play,  and,  indeed,  in  their 
most  typical  and  honoured  models  of  excellence  jeal- 
ously repressed — and  that  in  the  modern  races,  on  the 
other  hand,  which  stand  in  their  place,  character  is 
penetrated  and  permeated,  visibly,  notoriously,  by  a 
development  and  life  of  the  affections  and  the  emo- 
tional part  of  our  nature  to  which  we  can  see  nothing 
parallel  in  ancient  times.  I  suppose  this  contrast  is 
on  the  surface,  in  the  most  general  and  popular  con- 
ceptions of  these  characters.  One  observation  will  at 
once  bring  up  into  our  minds  the  difference  I  speak 
of  Take  some  of  our  common  forms  of  blame  and 
depreciation.  We  frequently  attribute  to  our  French 
neighbours,  and  still  more  to  Italians,  a  softness  of 
nature,  a  proneness  to  indulge  in  an  excessive,  and 
what  seems  to  us  unreal,  opening  and  pouring  forth  of 
the  heart,  a  love  of  endearing  and  tender  words,  an 
exaggerated  and  uncontrolled  exhibition  of  feeling, 
which  to  us  seems  mawkish  and  unmanly,  if  not  in- 


II  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  87 

sincere ;  we  think  we  trace  it  in  tlieir  habits,  in  their 
intercourse,  in  their  modes  of  address,  in  their  letters, 
in  their  devotions  ;  we  call  it  sentimental,  or  effeminate; 
we  laugh  at  it  as  childish,  or  we  condemn  and  turn 
away  from  it  as  unhealthy.  But  who  would  dream  of 
coupling  the  word  "  sentimental"  with  anything  Eoman  ? 
Who,  for  instance,  though  we  have  a  plaintive  Tibullus 
and  a  querulous  Ovid,  could  imagine  a  Eoman  Eous- 
seau  ?  That  well-known  idea  which  we  call  "  senti- 
ment "  did  not  exist  for  them  any  more  than  that 
which  we  call  "  charity."  They  might  be  pompous ; 
they  might  profess,  as  men  do  now,  feehngs  in  excess 
and  in  advance  of  what  they  really  had  ;  they  could, 
for  they  were  men,  be  deeply  moved ;  they  could  be 
passionate,  they  could  be  affectionate,  they  could  be 
tender.  I  do  not  forget  their  love  poems,  gay,  playful, 
or  melancholy ;  I  do  not  forget  their  epitaphs  on  their 
dead,  the  most  deeply  touching  of  all  epitaphs  for  the 
longing  and  profound  despair  with  which  they  bid 
their  eternal  farewell ;  I  do  not  forget  the  domestic 
virtues  of  many  Eoman  households,  the  majestic 
chastity  of  their  matrons,  all  that  is  involved  of  love 
and  trust  and  reverence  in  their  favourite  and  im- 
translatable  word  piefas ;  the  frequent  attachment  even 
of  the  slave,  the  frequent  kindness  of  the  master.  It 
was  not  that  there  were  not  affections  in  so  great  a 
people.  But  affections  with  them  were  looked  on 
with  mistrust  and  misgiving ;  it  was  the  proper  thing 
to  repress,  to  disown  them  ;   they  forced  their  way. 


88  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  ii 

like  some  irresistible  current,  through  a  hard  stern 
crust,  too  often  in  the  shape  of  passion,  and  were  not 
welcomed  and  honoured  when  they  came.  Between 
Eoman  gravity  and  Eoman  dignity  on  the  one  hand, 
and  Eoman  coarseness  and  brutality,  Eoman  pride, 
Eoman  vice,  on  the  other  hand,  there  was  no  room  for 
the  danger  and  weakness  of  sentimentalism — for  it  is 
a  danger  which  implies  that  men  have  found  out  the 
depth,  the  manifoldness,  the  deep  delight  of  the  affec- 
tions, and  that  an  atmosphere  has  been  created  in 
which  they  have  thriven  and  grown  into  their  in- 
numerable forms.  The  one  affection  which  the  true 
Eoman  thought  noble  and  safe  and  worthy,  the  one 
affection  which  he  could  trust  unsuspected  and  un- 
checked, was  the  love  of  his  country, — his  obstinate, 
never -flagging  passion  for  the  greatness  and  public 
good  of  Eome. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  unfavourable  side  of  this 
increased  development  of  the  emotional  part  of  the 
character  in  the  Southern  nations,  because  I  wished 
to  insist  strongly  on  the  fact  itself  of  the  change.  But 
though  this  ready  overflow  of  the  affections  can  be 
morbid  and  may  be  weak,  we  should  be  not  only  un- 
just, but  stupid  and  ignorant,  to  overlook  the  truth, 
that  in  itself  it  is  also  at  the  bottom  of  what  is  charac- 
teristically beautiful  and  most  attractive  in  the  people 
of  the  South.  If  you  have  ever  met  with  anything  in 
character,  French  or  Italian,  which  specially  charmed 
you,  either  in  literature  or  in  real  life,  I  am  sure  that 


n  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  89 

you  would  find  the  root  and  the  secret  of  it  in  the 
fuhiess  and  the  play  of  the  affections ;  in  their  unfold- 
ing and  in  their  ready  disclosure  ;  in  the  way  in  which 
they  have  blossomed  into  flowers  of  strange  richness 
and  varied  beauty ;  in  the  inexpressible  charm  and 
grace  and  delicacy  and  freedom  which  they  have  in- 
fused into  word  and  act  and  demeanour,  into  a  man's 
relations  with  his  family,  his  parents,  his  brothers  and 
sisters,  into  his  friendships,  and  if  he  has  been  a 
religious  man,  into  his  religious  life.  In  good  and 
bad  literature,  in  the  books  and  in  the  manners  which 
have  half  ruined  France,  and  in  those  which  are  still 
her  redemption  and  hope,  still  you  find,  in  one  way  or 
another,  the  dominant  and  animating  element  in  some 
strong  force  and  exhibition  of  the  affections.  You 
will  see  it  in  such  letters  as  those  of  Madame  de 
Sevign^.  You  may  see  it  in  the  pictures  of  a  social 
life  almost  at  one  time  peculiar  to  France — a  life  so 
full  of  the  great  world  and  refined  culture,  and  the 
gaiety  and  whirl  of  high  and  brilliant  circles  in  a  gi'eat 
capital,  yet  withal  so  charmingly  and  unaffectedly 
simple,  unselfish,  and  warm,  so  really  serious  at 
bottom,  it  may  be,  so  profoundly  self-devoted :  such 
a  book  as  one  that  has  lately  been  lying  on  our 
tables,  Madame  Augustus  Craven's  Becit  cVune  Sosur, 
a  sister's  story  of  the  most  ordinary,  and  yet  of  the 
deepest  family  union,  family  joys,  family  attachments, 
family  sorrows  and  partings, — a  story  of  people  living 
their  usual  life  in  the  great  world,  yet  as  natural  and 


90  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  ii 

tender  and  unambitious  as  if  the  great  world  did  not 
exist  for  them.  You  may  see  the  same  thing  in  their 
records  of  professedly  devotional  lives, — in  what  we 
read,  for  instance,  about  the  great  men  and  women  of 
Port-royal,  about  Tension,  about  St.  Francis  de  Sales, 
or,  to  come  later  down,  about  Lacordaire,  or  Eugenie 
de  Guerin,  or  Montalembert.  In  French  eloquence, 
very  noble  when  it  is  real — in  French  bombast,  in- 
imitable, unapproachable  in  the  exquisiteness  of  its 
absurdity  and  nonsense ;  —  whether  it  is  what  is 
beautiful  or  contemptible,  whether  it  subdues  and 
fascinates,  or  provokes,  or  amuses  you,  the  mark 
and  sign  is  there  of  a  nature  in  which  the  affections 
claim  and  are  allowed,  in  their  real  or  their  counterfeit 
forms,  ample  range  and  full  scope  ;  where  they  are  ever 
close  to  the  surface,  as  well  as  working  in  the  depths ; 
where  they  suffuse  all  life,  and  spontaneously  and  irre- 
sistibly colour  thought  and  speech ;  where  they  play 
about  the  whole  character  in  all  its  movements,  like 
the  lightning  about  the  clouds  of  the  summer  evening. 
And  so  with  the  Italians.  The  great  place  which 
the  affections  have  taken  in  their  national  character, 
and  the  ways  in  which  the  affections  unfold  and  reveal 
themselves,  are  distinctive  and  momentous.  More 
than  genius  by  itself,  more  than  the  sagacity  and 
temperate  good  sense  which  Italians  claim,  or  than 
the  craft  with  which  others  have  credited  them,  this 
power  of  the  affections  has  determined  the  place  of 
Italy  in  modern  civilisation.     The  weakness  of  which 


II  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  91 

her  literature  and  manners  have  most  to  be  ashamed, 
and  the  loftiness  and  strength  of  which  she  may  be 
proud,  both  come  from  the  ruling  and  prominent 
influence  of  the  affections,  and  the  indulgence,  wise  or 
unwise,  of  their  claims.  From  it  has  come  the  inde- 
scribable imbecility  of  the  Italian  poetasters.  From  it 
has  come  the  fire,  the  depth,  the  nobleness  of  the 
Italian  poets ;  and  not  of  them  only,  but  of  writers 
who,  with  much  that  is  evil,  have  much  that  is  both 
manly  and  touching — the  Italian  novelists,  the  Italian 
satirists.  It  has  given  their  spell  not  only  to  the 
sonnets  of  Michel  Angelo,  but  to  the  story  of  Man- 
zoni,  and  to  the  epigrams,  so  fierce  and  bitter,  but  so 
profoundly  pathetic,  of  Leopardi  and  Giusti.  And  you 
must  not  think  that  this  is  a  thing  of  comparatively 
modern  times.  This  spectacle  of  the  affections  burst- 
ing in  their  new  vigour  from  the  bands  or  the  dead- 
ness  of  the  old  world  soon  meets  us  in  the  middle 
ages.  Take,  for  instance,  —  an  extreme  instance,  if 
you  will,  —  one  of  the  favourite  Italian  saints,  St. 
Francis ;  one  who  both  reflected  and  also  evoked  what 
was  in  the  heart  of  the  people ;  one  who  to  us  is  apt  to 
seem  simply  an  extravagant  enthusiast,  but  was  once 
a  marvellous  power  in  the  world,  and  who  is  beginning 
once  more  to  interest  our  own  very  different  age, — 
witness  Mrs.  Oliphant's  life  of  him  in  the  Sunday 
Library.  In  him  you  may  see  the  difference  between 
the  old  and  the  new  Italians.  An  old  Eoman  might 
have  turned  stoic  or  cynic :  an  old  Eoman  might  have 


92  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  ii 

cliosen  to  be  poor,  have  felt  the  vanity  of  the  world, 
have  despised  and  resigned  it.      But  when  St.  Francis 
resolves  to  be  poor  he  does  not  stop  there.      His  pur- 
pose blossoms  out  into  the  most  wonderful  develop- 
ment of  the  affections,  of  all  that  is  loving,  of  all  that 
is  sympathetic,  of  all  that  is  cheerful  and  warm  and 
glad  and  gracious.     Poverty  he  speaks  of  as  his  dear 
and  glorious  Bride,  and  the  marriage  of  Francis  and 
Poverty  becomes  one  of  the  great  themes  of  song  and 
art;    there    must    be   something   along  with  his  tre- 
mendous self-sacrifice  which  shall  invest  it  with  the 
charm  of  the  affections.      Stern  against  privation  and 
pain  and  the  face  of  death  as  the  sternest  of  Romans, 
his  sternness  passed  on   into   a  boundless  energy  of 
loving,  a  fulness  of  joy  and  delight,  which  most  of  us 
feel  more  hard  to  understand  than  his  sternness.    "  He 
was  a  man,"   says  Mrs.   Oliphant,  "  overflowing  with 
sympathy  for  man  and  beast — for  God's  creatures — 
wherever  he  encountered  them.     Not  only  was  every 
man  his  brother,  but  every  animal — the  sheep  in  the 
fields,  the  birds  in  the  branches,  the  brother  ass  on 
which  he  rode,  the  sister  bees  who  took  refuge  in  his 
protection.       He  was   the  friend  of  everything    that 
suffered  and  rejoiced.  .  .  .  And  by  this  divine  right 
of  nature  everything  trusted    in    him.  .  .  .  For    he 
loved  everything  that  had  life. 

He  prayetli  best,  who  lovetli  best 
AU  things  both  great  and  small ; 
For  the  dear  God  who  loveth  us, 
He  made  and  loveth  alL 


11  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  93 

"  Such  was  the  unconscious  creed  of  the  prophet  of 
Assisi ; "  which  made  him  salute  the  birds  as  his 
sisters  in  praising  God,  and  the  defenceless  leveret 
as  his  brother;  which  inspired  the  legends  of  his 
taming  fierce  "  Brother  Wolf "  in  the  streets  of 
Gubbio ;  which  dictated  his  "  Canticle  of  the  Crea- 
tures," praising  God  for  all  things  He  had  made 
to  give  men  help  and  joy  —  our  brother  the  sun, 
our  sisters  the  moon  and  the  lovely  stars,  our 
"  humble  and  precious "  sister  water,  our  brother 
fire,  "  bright  and  pleasant  and  very  mighty ; "  prais- 
ing his  Lord  for  those  who  pardon  one  another  for 
His  Son's  sake,  and  stilling  with  the  spell  of  his  song 
the  rage  of  civil  discord ;  praising  his  Lord,  as  the  end 
drew  near,  "for  our  sister  the  death  of  the  body,  from 
which  no  man  escapeth."  This  is  what  you  see  in  one 
who  in  that  age,  among  those  people,  had  access,  un- 
abashed and  honoured,  to  the  seats  of  power;  who 
cast  a  charm  over  Italian  democracies ;  who  woke  up 
a  response  in  the  hearts  at  once  of  labourers  and 
scholars.  He  is  a  man  who  in  ancient  Eome  is  incon- 
ceivable at  once  in  his  weakness  and  his  strength. 
This  is  what  I  mean  by  the  changed  place  of  the 
affections  in  the  new  compared  with  the  old  Italians. 

2.  I  will  notice  another  point  of  difference  between 
the  ancient  and  modern  nations  of  the  south  of 
Europe.  It  can  hardly  be  said  that  the  Eomans 
were,  in  any  eminent  sense,  an  imaginative  people. 
I   know  that  I  am   speaking  of  the    countrymen  of 


94  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  ii 

Lucretius  and  Catullus,  of  Virgil  and  Horace.  And 
of  course  there  was  imagination  in  the  grand  ideas  of 
rule  and  empire  which  filled  the  Eoman  mind.  But 
they  had  not  that  great  gift  of  which  art  is  born ;  the 
eye  to  discern  the  veiled  beauty  of  which  the  world  is 
full,  in  form,  in  numbers,  in  sounds,  in  proportion,  in 
human  expression,  in  human  character,  the  sympathy 
which  can  unveil  and  embody  that  beauty  in  shapes 
which  are  absolutely  new  creations,  things  new  in 
history  and  in  what  exists.  They  had  not  that  won- 
derful native  impulse  and  power  which  called  into 
being  the  Homeric  poems,  the  stage  of  Athens,  the 
architecture  of  the  Parthenon,  the  sculpture  of  Phidias 
and  Praxiteles,  the  painting  of  Polygnotus,  the  lyric 
poetry  of  Simonides  and  Pindar.  I  hope  you  will  not 
suppose  that  I  am  insensible  to  the  manifold  beauty 
or  magnificence  of  what  Eoman  art  produced  in  litera- 
ture, in  building,  in  bust  and  statue,  in  graceful  and 
fanciful  ornament.  But  in  the  general  history  of  art, 
Eoman  art  seems  to  occupy  much  the  same  place  as 
the  age  of  Dryden  and  Pope  occupies  in  the  history  of 
our  own  literature.  Dryden  and  Pope  are  illustrious 
names ;  but  English  poetry  would  be  something  very 
different  from  what  it  is  if  they  were  its  only  or  its 
chief  representatives.  They  might  earn  us  the  credit 
of  fire,  and  taste,  and  exquisite  and  delicate  finish  of 
workmanship ;  nay,  of  a  cautious  boldness  of  genius, 
and  chastened  venturesomeness  of  invention ;  they 
would  not  entitle  our  literature  to  the  praise  of  ima- 


II  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  95 

ginativeness  and  originality.  For  tliat  we  must  look 
to  Chaucer  and  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  and  to  names 
which  are  yet  recent  and  fresh  among  us ;  and  I  can 
hardly  count  the  beautiful  poetry  of  Eome  to  be  of 
this  order,  or  to  disclose  the  same  kind  of  gifts.  The 
greatest  of  Eoman  poets,  in  the  grandest  of  his  bursts 
of  eloquence,  confessed  the  imaginative  inferiority  of 
his  people,  and  bade  them  remember  that  their  arts, 
their  calling,  their  compensation,  were  to  crush  the 
mighty,  to  establish  peace,  and  give  law  to  the  world.^ 
I  need  not  remind  you  how  different  in  genius  and 
faculty  were  the  later  nations  of  the  south  of  Europe. 
Degenerate  as  their  Eoman  ancestors  would  have 
accounted  them  for  having  lost  the  secret  of  conquest 
and  empire,  they  won  and  long  held  a  supremacy,  in 
some  points  hardly  yet  contested,  in  the  arts,  in  which 
imagination,  bold,  powerful,  and  delicate,  invents  and 
creates  and  shapes.  In  the  noblest  poetry,  in  paint- 
ing, in  sculpture,  in  music,  Italians  led  the  way  and 
set  the  standard ;  in  some  provinces  of  art  they  have 
been  rivalled ;  in  some,  in  time,  surpassed ;  in  some 
they  are  still  unapproached.  But  without  laying 
stress    on    their    masterpieces,  the    point  is   that    in 

*  Excudent  alii  spirantia  moUius  sera  ; 
Credo  equidem :  vivos  ducent  de  marmore  vultus  j 
Orabunt  caiisas  melius,  coelique  meatus 
Describent  radio,  et  surgentia  sidera  dicent ; 
Tu  regere  imperio  populos,  Romane,  memento : 
Hse  tibi  erunt  artes ;  pacisque  imponere  morem, 
Parcere  subjectis,  et  debellare  superbos. 


96  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  ii 

the  descendants  of  the  subjects  of  the  Empii-e,  so 
hard  and  prosaic  and  businesslike,  the  whole  temper 
and  tendency  of  these  ra,ces  is  altered.  A  new  and 
unsuspected  spring  in  their  nature  has  been  touched, 
and  a  current  gushes  forth,  no  more  to  fail,  of  new 
aspirations  and  ideas,  new  feelings  to  be  expressed, 
new  thoughts  to  be  embodied.  Imaginative  faculty, 
in  endlessly  varying  degrees  of  force  and  purity,  be- 
comes one  of  the  prominent  and  permanent  character- 
istics of  the  race.  Crowds  of  unknown  poets  and 
painters  all  over  Italy  have  yielded  to  the  impulse, 
and  attempted  to  realise  the  ideal  beauty  that  haunted 
them ;  and  the  masterpieces  which  are  the  flower  and 
crown  of  all  art  are  but  the  picked  and  choice  ex- 
amples out  of  a  crop  of  Like  efforts — a  crop  with 
numberless  failures,  more  or  less  signal,  but  which 
do  nothing  to  discourage  the  passionate  wish  to 
employ  the  powers  of  the  imagination.  The  place  of 
one  of  the  least  imaginative  among  the  great  races  of 
history  is  taken  by  one  of  the  most  imaginative  — 
one  most  strongly  and  specially  marked  by  imagi- 
native gifts,  and  most  delighting  in  the  use  of  them. 

Whence  has  come  this  change  over  the  character 
of  these  nations  ?  Whence,  in  these  races  sprung 
from  the  subjects  of  the  sternest  of  Empires  and 
moulded  under  its  influence,  this  reversal  of  the 
capital  and  leading  marks,  by  which  they  are  popularly 
known  and  characterised ;  this  development  of  the 
emotional  part  of  their  nature,  this  cra^dng  after  the 


II  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  97 

beautiful  in  art  ?  Whence  the  inexhaustible  fertility 
and  inventiveness,  the  unfailing  taste  and  tact  and 
measure,  the  inexpressible  charm  of  delicacy  and  con- 
siderate forethought  and  exuberant  sympathy,  which 
are  so  distinctly  French,  and  which  mark  what  is  best 
in  French  character  and  French  writing  ?  Whence 
that  Italian  splendour  of  imagination  and  profound 
insight  into  those  subtle  connections  by  which  objects 
of  the  outward  senses  stir  and  charm  and  ennoble  the 
inward  soul  ?  What  was  the  discipline  which  wrought 
all  this  ?  Who  was  it,  who  in  the  ages  of  confusion 
which  followed  the  fall  of  the  Empire,  sowed  and 
ripened  the  seeds  which  were  to  blossom  into  such 
wondrous  poetry  in  the  fourteenth  century,  into  such  a 
matchless  burst  of  art  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  ? 
Who  touched  in  these  Latin  races  the  hidden  vein  of 
tenderness,  the  "  fount  of  tears,"  the  delicacies  and 
courtesies  of  mutual  kindness,  the  riches  of  art  and 
the  artist's  earnestness  ?  Who  did  all  this,  I  do  not 
say  in  the  fresh  natures  of  the  Teutonic  invaders,  for 
whom  the  name  barbarians  is  a  very  inadequate  and 
misleading  word,  but  in  the  spoiled  and  hardened 
children  of  an  exhausted  and  ruined  civilisation  ? 

Can  there  be  any  question  as  to  what  produced  this 
change  ?  It  was  the  conversion  of  these  races  to  the 
faith  of  Christ.  Eevolutions  of  character  like  this  do 
not,  of  course,  come  without  many  influences  acting 
together;  and  in  this  case  the  humiliations  and  long 
affliction   of  the   Northern   invasions   produced    their 


98  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  ii 

deep  effects.  Hearts  were  broken  and  pride  was 
tamed,  and  in  their  misery  men  took  new  account  of 
what  they  needed  one  from  another.  But  the  cause 
of  causes,  which  made  other  causes  fruitful,  was  the 
presence,  in  the  hour  of  their  distress,  of  the  Christian 
Church,  with  its  message,  its  teaching,  and  its  discip- 
line. The  Gospel  was — in  a  way  in  which  no  religion, 
nothing  which  spoke  of  the  unseen  and  the  eternal, 
ever  had  been  or  could  be — a  religion  of  the  affections, 
a  religion  of  sympathy.  By  what  it  said,  by  the  way 
in  which  it  said  it,  Christianity  opened  absolutely  a 
new  sphere,  new  possibilities,  a  new  world,  to  human 
affections.  This  is  what  we  see  in  the  conversions, 
often  so  sudden,  always  so  fervent,  in  the  New 
Testament,  and  in  the  early  ages.  Three  great 
revelations  were  made  by  the  Gospel,  which  seized  on 
human  nature,  and  penetrated  and  captivated  that 
part  of  it  by  which  men  thought  and  felt,  their 
capacities  for  love  and  hope,  for  grief  and  joy.  There 
was  a  new  idea  and  sense  of  sin ;  there  was  the 
humiliation,  the  companionship  with  us  in  our  mortal 
life,  of  the  Son  of  God,  the  Cross  and  the  Sacrifice,  of 
Him  who  was  also  the  Most  Highest ;  there  was  the 
new  brotherhood  of  men  with  men  in  the  family  and 
Church  of  Christ  and  God.  To  the  proud,  the 
reserved,  the  stern,  the  frivolous,  the  selfish,  who  met 
the  reflection  of  their  own  very  selves  in  all  society 
around  them,  there  was  disclosed  a  new  thing  in  the 
human  heart  and  a  new  thing  in  the  relations  of  men 


II  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  99 

to  God  and  to  one  another.  There  woke  up  a  hitherto 
unknown  consciousness  of  the  profound  mystery  of 
sin  —  certain,  strange,  terrible ;  and  with  it  new 
searchings  of  heart,  new  agonies  of  conscience,  a  new 
train  of  the  deex^est  feelings,  the  mingled  pains  and 
joys  of  penitence,  the  liberty  of  forgiveness,  the 
princely  spirit  of  sincerity,  the  ineffable  peace  of  God. 
And  with  it  came  that  unimaginable  unveiling  of  the 
love  of  God,  which  overwhelms  the  imagination  which 
once  takes  it  in,  alike  whether  the  mind  accepts  or 
rejects  it ;  which  grave  unbelief  recoils  from,  as  "  that 
strange  story  of  a  crucified  God " ;  which  the  New 
Testament  expresses  in  its  record  of  those  ever-amazing 
words,  "  God  so  loved  the  world  that  He  gave  His  only 
begotten  Son,  to  the  end  that  all  that  believe  in  Him 
should  not  perish,  but  have  everlasting  life," — the 
appearance  in  the  world  of  time  of  the  everlasting 
Word,  of  Christ  the  Sacrifice,  Christ  the  Healer, 
Christ  the  Judge,  Christ  the  Consoler  of  Mankind  and 
their  Eternal  Portion.  And  then  it  made  men  feel 
that,  bound  together  in  that  august  and  never-ending 
brotherhood  with  the  Holy  One  and  the  Blessed,  they 
had  ties  and  bonds  one  to  another  which  transformed 
all  their  duties  into  services  of  tenderness  and  love. 
Once  caught  sight  of,  once  embodied  in  the  words  of  a 
spokesman  and  interpreter  of  humanity  like  St.  Paul, 
these  revelations  could  never  more  be  forgotten. 
These  things  were  really  believed ;  they  were  ever 
present    to   thought   and    imagination,   revolutionising 


lOO  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  ii 

life,  giving  birth  to  love  stronger  than  death,  making 
death  beautiful  and  joyful.  The  great  deeps  of  man's 
nature  were  broken  up — one  deep  of  the  heart  called 
to  another,  while  the  waves  and  storms  of  that  great 
time  of  judgment  were  passing  over  the  world. 
Here  was  the  key  which  unlocked  men's  tenderness ; 
here,  while  they  learned  a  new  enthusiasm,  they 
learned  what  they  had  never  known  of  themselves,  the 
secret  of  new  affections.  And  in  the  daily  and  yearly 
progress  of  the  struggling  Church,  these  affections 
were  fed  and  moulded,  and  deeply  sunk  into  character. 
The  Latin  races  learned  this  secret,  in  the  community 
of  conviction  and  hope,  in  the  community  of 
suffering,  between  the  high-born  and  the  slave, — 
they  learned  it  when  they  met  together  at  the  place  of 
execution,  in  the  blood-stained  amphitheatre,  in  the 
crowded  prison-house,  made  musical  with  the  "  sweet 
solemnities  of  gratitude  and  praise,"  with  the  loving 
and  high-hearted  farewells  of  resignation  and  patience ; 
they  learned  it  in  the  Catacombs,  at  the  graves  of  the 
martyrs,  in  the  Eucharistic  Feast,  in  the  sign  of  the 
Eedeemer's  Cross,  in  the  kiss  of  peace  ;  they  learned  it 
in  that  service  of  perpetual  prayer,  in  which  early 
Latin  devotion  gradually  found  its  expression  and 
embodied  its  faith, — in  those  marvellous  combinations 
of  majesty  and  tenderness,  so  rugged  yet  so  piercing 
and  so  pathetic,  the  Latin  hymns ;  in  those  unequalled 
expressions,  in  the  severest  and  briefest  words,  of  the 
deepest  needs  of  the  soul,  and  of  all  the  ties  which  bind 


II  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  loi 

men  to  God  and  to  one  another,  the  Latin  Collects ;  in 
the  ever-repeated  Psalter,  in  the  Ifiserere  and  De  Pro- 
fundis,  in  the  Canticles  of  morning  and  evening  and  the 
hour  of  rest  and  of  death,  in  the  Magnificat  and  Nunc 
Dimittis,  in  the  "  new  song  "  of  the  awful  Te  Dcum — 

Deep  as  tlie  grave,  high  as  the  Eternal  Throne. 

They  learned  it  in  that  new  social  interest,  that 
reverence  and  compassion  and  care  for  the  poor, 
which,  beginning  in  the  elder  Scriptures,  in  the 
intercessions  of  the  Psalms  for  the  poor  and  needy,  and 
in  the  Prophetic  championship  of  their  cause  against 
pride  and  might,  had  become,  since  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  the  characteristic  of  Christ's  religion.  They 
learned  it  in  that  new  commandment  of  the  Divine 
Founder  of  the  Church,  the  great  all  -  embracing 
Christian  word,  charity.  These  are  things  which, 
sinking  deep  into  men's  hearts,  alter,  perhaps  without 
their  knowing  it,  the  staple  of  their  character.  Here 
it  is  that  we  see,  unless  I  am  greatly  mistaken,  the 
account  of  one  great  change  in  the  population  of 
the  South  in  modern  and  ancient  times ;  of  the 
contrast  caused  by  the  place  which  the  affections 
occupy,  compared  with  the  sternness  and  hardness 
alike  of  what  was  heroic  and  what  was  commonplace 
in  ancient  Italian  character.  Imagine  a  Eoman  of  the 
old  stamp  making  the  sign  of  the  cross.  He  might 
perhaps  do  it  superstitiously,  as  consuls  might  go  to 
see  the  sacred  chickens  feed,  or  augurs  might  smile  at 


I02  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  ii 

one  another;  but  imagine  him  doing  it,  as  Dante,  or 
Savonarola,  or  Pascal  might  do  it,  to  remind  himseK 
of  a  Divine  Friend,  "  Who  had  loved  him  and  given 
Himself  for  him." 

And  the  same  account,  it  seems  to  me,  is  to  be 
given  of  the  other  great  change  in  Southern  character  •, 
the  development  of  imaginative  originaHty  and  of 
creative  genius  in  all  branches  of  art  in  later  times. 
It  was  that  the  preaching  and  belief  of  the  Gospel 
opened  to  these  races  a  new  world,  such  as  they  had 
never  dreamed  of,  not  only  of  truth  and  goodness,  but 
of  Divine  beauty.  Eugged  and  unlovely,  indeed,  was 
all  that  the  outward  aspect  of  religion  at  first  pre- 
sented to  the  world :  it  was,  as  was  so  eloquently  said  ^ 
some  time  ago  in  this  place,  the  contrast  presented  by 
the  dim  and  dreary  Catacombs  underground  to  the 
pure  and  brilliant  Itahan  sky  and  the  monuments  of 
Eoman  wealth  and  magnificence  above.  But  in  that 
poor  and  mean  society,  which  cared  so  little  for  the 
things  of  sense  and  sight,  there  were  nourished  and 
growing  up — for,  indeed,  it  was  the  Church  of  the  God 
of  all  glory  and  all  beauty,  the  chosen  home  of  the 
Eternal  Creating  Spirit — thoughts  of  a  perfect  beauty 
above  this  world  ;  of  a  light  and  a  glory  which  the  sun 
could  never  see :  of  types,  in  character  and  in  form,  of 
grace,  of  sweetness,  of  nobleness,  of  tenderness,  of  per- 
fection, which  could  find  no  home  in  time — which 
were  of  the  eternal  and  the  unseen  on  which  human 
^  By  Professor  Lightfoot. 


11  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  103 

life  bordered,  and  which  was  to  it,  indeed,  "  no  foreign 
land."  There  these  Eomans  unlearned  their  old  hard- 
ness and  gained  a  new  language  and  new  faculties. 
Hardly,  and  with  difficulty,  and  with  scanty  success, 
did  they  at  first  strive  to  express  what  glowed  with 
such  magnificence  to  their  inward  eye,  and  kindled 
their  souls  within  them.  Their  efforts  were  rude — 
rude  in  art,  often  hardly  less  rude  in  language.  But 
that  Divine  and  manifold  idea  before  them,  they  knew 
that  it  was  a  reality ;  it  should  not  escape  them, 
though  it  still  baffled  them  ; — they  would  not  let  it  go. 
And  so,  step  by  step,  age  after  age,  as  it  continued  to 
haunt  their  minds,  it  gradually  grew  into  greater 
distinctness  and  expression.  From  the  rough  attempts 
in  the  Catacombs  or  the  later  mosaics,  in  all  their 
roughness  so  instinct  with  the  majesty  and  tenderness 
and  severe  sweetness  of  the  thoughts  which  inspired 
them — from  the  emblems  and  types  and  figures,  the 
trees  and  the  rivers  of  Paradise,  the  dove  of  peace,  the 
palms  of  triumph,  the  Good  Shepherd,  the  hart  no 
longer  "  desiring,"  but  at  last  tasting  "  the  water- 
brooks,"  from  the  faint  and  hesitating  adumbrations 
of  the  most  awful  of  human  countenances — from  all 
these  feeble  but  earnest  attempts  to  body  forth  what 
the  soul  was  full  of.  Christian  art  passed,  with  per- 
sistent undismayed  advance,  through  the  struggles  of 
the  middle  ages  to  the  inexpressible  delicacy  and 
beauty  of  Giotto  and  Era  Angelico,  to  the  Last  Supper 
of  Lionardo,  to  the  highest  that  the  human  mind  ever 


I04  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  ii 

imagined  of  tenderness  and  unearthly  majesty,  in  the 
Mother  and  the  Divine  Son  of  the  Madonna  di  San 
Sisto.  And  the  same  with  poetry.  The  poetry  of 
which  the  Christian  theology  was  full  from  the  first 
wrought  itself  in  very  varying  measures,  but  with  pro- 
found and  durable  effort,  into  the  new  mind  and  soul 
of  reviving  Europe,  till  it  gathered  itself  up  from  an 
infinite  variety  of  sources,  history  and  legend  and 
scholastic  argument  and  sacred  hymn,  to  burst  forth 
in  one  mighty  volume,  in  that  unique  creation  of  the 
regenerated  imagination  of  the  South, — the  eventful 
poem  which  made  the  Italians  one,  whatever  might 
become  of  Italy, — the  sacred  song  which  set  forth  the 
wonderful  fortunes  of  the  soul  of  man,  under  God's 
government  and  judgment,  its  loss,  its  discipline,  its 
everlasting  glory — the  Divina  Commedia  of  Dante. 

I  will  illustrate  these  changes  by  two  comparisons. 
First,  as  to  the  development  of  the  imaginative  faculty. 
Compare,  and  I  confine  the  comparison  to  this  single 
point — compare,  as  to  the  boldness,  and  originahty, 
and  af&uence  of  the  creative  imagination — the  jEneid 
of  Virgil  and  the  Divina  Commedia  of  Dante,  whose 
chief  glory  it  was  to  be  Yu*gil's  scholar.  The  Divina 
Commedia  may,  indeed,  be  taken  as  the  measure  and 
proof  of  the  change  which  had  come  over  Southern 
thought  and  character  since  the  fall  of  the  Empire. 
There  can  be  no  question  how  completely  it  reflected 
the  national  mind,  how  deeply  the  national  mind 
responded  to  it.      Springing  full  formed  and  complete 


II  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  105 

from  its  creator's  soul,  without  model  or  precedent,  it 
was  at  once  hailed  throughout  the  Peninsula,  and 
acknowledged  to  be  as  great  as  after  ages  have  thought 
it ;  it  rose  at  once  into  its  glory.  Learned  and  un- 
learned, princes  and  citizens,  recognised  in  it  the  same 
surpassing  marvel  that  we  in  our  day  behold  in  some 
great  scientific  triumph  ;  books  and  commentaries  were 
written  about  it ;  chairs  were  founded  in  Italian  Uni- 
versities to  lecture  upon  it.  In  the  Divina  Comwedia 
Dante  professes  to  have  a  teacher,  an  unapproachable 
example,  a  perfect  master  and  guide ; — Yirgil,  the 
honour  and  wonder  of  Eoman  literature.  Master  and 
scholar,  the  Mantuan  of  the  age  of  Augustus,  and  the 
riorentine  citizen  of  the  age  of  the  Guelfs  and  Ghibel- 
lines,  his  devout  admirer,  were,  it  need  not  be  said, 
essentially  different ;  but  the  point  of  difference  on 
which  I  now  lay  stress  is  the  place  which  the  affec- 
tions, in  their  variety  and  fulness  and  perpetual  play, 
occupy  in  the  works  of  writers  so  closely  related  to 
one  another.  From  the  stately  grace,  the  "  supreme 
elegance,"  from  the  martial  and  senatorial  majesty  of 
the  Imperial  poem,  you  come,  in  Dante,  on  severity 
indeed,  and  loftiness  of  word  and  picture  and  rhythm ; 
but  you  find  the  poem  pervaded  and  instinct  with 
human  affections  of  every  kind ;  the  soul  is  free,  and 
every  shade  of  its  feelings,  its  desires,  its  emotions, 
finds  its  expressive  note ;  they  pass  from  high  to  low, 
from  deep  to  bright,  through  a  scale  of  infinite  range 
and  changefulness  ;  you  are  astonished  to  find  moods 


io6  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  II 

of  feeling  which  you  thought  peculiar  and  unobserved 
in  yourself  noted  by  the  poet's  all-embracing  sympathy. 
But  this  is  no  part  of  the  Latin  poet's  experience,  at 
least  of  his  poetic  outfit ;  such  longings,  such  anxieties, 
such  despair,  such  indignation,  such  gracious  sweetness, 
such  fire  of  holy  wrath,  such  fire  of  Divine  love, 
familiar  to  our  modern  world,  to  our  modern  poetry, 
are  strange  to  Virgil.  ISTay,  in  his  day,  to  the  greatest 
masters  of  the  human  soul,  to  the  noblest  interpreters 
of  its  ideals,  they  had  not  yet  been  born.  I  suppose 
that  in  Yii^gil  the  places  where  we  should  look  for 
examples  of  this  bursting  out  of  the  varied  play  of  the 
affections,  native,  profound,  real,  would  be  the  account 
of  the  last  fatal  night  of  Troy,  the  visit  to  the  regions 
and  shades  of  the  dead,  the  death  of  Pallas  and  his 
slayer  Turnus,  the  episode,  above  all,  of  the  soldier 
friends,  Msus  and  the  young  Euryalus.  Who  shall 
say  that  there  is  any  absence  of  tender  and  solemn 
feeling  ?  The  Italian  poet  owns,  with  unstinted  and 
never-tiring  homage,  that  here  he  learnt  the  secret  and 
the  charm  of  poetry.  But  compare  on  this  one  point 
— viz.  the  presence,  the  vividness,  the  naturalness,  the 
diversity,  the  frankness,  of  human  affection, — compare 
with  these  passages  almost  any  canto  taken  at  random 
of  the  Divina  Commedia,  and  I  think  you  would  be 
struck  with  the  way  in  which,  in  complete  contrast 
with  the  JEneid,  the  whole  texture  of  the  poem  is 
penetrated  and  is  alive  with  feelmg ;  with  aU  forms  of 
grief  and  pity  and  amazement,  with  all  forms  of  love 


II  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  107 

and  admiration  and  delight  and  joy.  In  the  story  of 
Francesca,  in  the  agony  of  the  Tower  of  Famine,  in 
the  varied  endurance  and  unfailing  hope  of  the  Pur- 
gatorio,  in  the  joys  and  songs  of  the  Paradiso,  we  get 
new  and  never-forgotten  glimpses  into  the  abysses 
and  the  capacities  of  the  soul  of  man. 

In  the  next  place,  what  I  seek  to  illustrate  is  the 
difference  in  the  place  occupied  by  the  affections  in 
men  of  the  old  and  the  new  race,  in  the  same  great 
national  group,  a  difference  made,  as  I  conceive,  by 
Christianity.  Let  us  take,  as  one  term  of  the  com- 
parison, the  great  and  good  Emperor  Marcus  Aurelius. 
His  goodness  is  not  only  known  from  history,  but  we 
also  have  the  singular  and  inestimable  advantage  of 
possessing  "  a  record  of  his  inward  life,  his  Journal,  or 
Commentaries,  or  Meditations,  or  Thoughts,  for  by  all 
these  names  has  the  work  been  called."  I  take  this 
description  from  an  essay  on  him  by  Mr.  Matthew 
Arnold,  which  gives  what  seems  to  me  a  beautiful  and 
truthful  picture  of  one  of  the  most  genuine  and  earnest 
and  elevated  souls  of  the  ancient  world.  I  cannot 
express  my  wonder,  my  admiration,  my  thankfulness, 
every  time  I  open  his  book,  and  remember  that  it  was 
written  by  a  Eoman  Emperor  in  the  midst  of  war  and 
business,  and  remember  also  what  a  Eoman  Emperor, 
the  master  of  the  world,  might  in  those  days  be,  and 
what  he  often  was.  What  is  so  touching  is  the 
mixture  of  heroic  truth  and  purpose,  heroic  in  its  self- 
command  and  self-surrender,  with  a  deep  tenderness 


io8  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  il 

not  the  less  evident  because  under  austere  restraint. 
"  It  is  by  its  accent  of  emotion,"   says  Mr.    Arnold, 
"  that  the  morality  of  M.  Aurelius  acquires  its  special 
character,  and  reminds  one  of  Christian  morality.     The 
sentences  of  Seneca  are  stimulating  to  the  intellect ; 
the    sentences    of   Epictetus    are     fortifying     to    the 
character  ;  the  sentences  of  Marcus  Aurelius  find  their 
way    to    the    soul."     In  his    opening  pages,  written 
apparently  in  camp  in  a  war  against  the  wild  tribes 
of  the  Danube,  he  goes  over  in  memory  all  his  friends, 
remembering  the  several  good  examples  he  had  seen 
in  each,  the  services,   great   and  small,  to  his  moral 
nature  he  had  received  from  each,  and  then  thank- 
fully refers  all  to  the  Divine  power  and  providence 
which  had  kept  his  life,  thanking  the  gods,  as  Bishop 
Andrews  thanks  God  in  his  devotions,  for  his  good 
parents  and  good  sister,  "  for  teachers  kind,  benefactors 
never    to   be   forgotten,    intimates    congenial,    friends 
sincere  ...  for    all    who   had    advantaged    him    by 
writings,  converse,  patterns,   rebukes,  even  injuries  " 
.  .  .  "for  nearly  everything  good" — thanking  them 
that  he  was  kept  from  folly   and  shame  and  sin — 
thanking  them  that  "  though  it  was  his  mother's  fate 
to  die  young,  it  was  from   her,"   he  says,   "that   he 
learned  piety  and  beneficence,  and  abstinence  not  only 
from  evil  deeds  but  from  evil  thoughts "— "  that  she 
had  spent  the  last  years  of  her  life  with  him;"  "that 
whenever  I  wished  to  help  any  man  in  his   need,  I 
was  never  told  that  I  had  not  the  means  to  do  it  j  .  .  . 


II  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  109 

that  I  have  a  wife,  so  obedient,  so  affectionate,  and 
so  simple ;  that  I  have  such  good  masters  for  my 
children." 

Two  centuries  later  we  come  upon  another  famous 
book,  Latin  in  feeling,  and  in  this  case  in  language, 
— the  record  of  the  history  and  experience  of  a  soul 
thirsting  and  striving  after  the  best.  After  the  Medi- 
tations of  the  Eoman  Emperor  come  the  "  Confessions  " 
of  the  Christian  saint — St.  Augustine.  It  is  not  to 
my  purpose  to  compare  these  two  remarkable  books 
except  in  this  one  point.  In  Marcus  Aurelius,  emo- 
tion there  is,  affection,  love,  gratitude  to  a  Divine 
Power  which  he  knows  not ;  but  his  feelings  refrain 
from  speaking, — they  have  not  found  a  language.  In 
St.  Augustine's  Confessions  they  have  learned  to  speak, 
— they  have  learned,  without  being  ashamed  of  them- 
selves, without  pretence  of  unworthiness,  to  pour  out 
of  their  fulness.  The  chain  is  taken  off  the  heart ; 
the  lips  are  unloosed.  In  both  books  there  is  a  retro- 
spect, earnest,  honest,  thankful,  of  the  writer's  provi- 
dential education ;  in  both,  the  writers  speak  of  what 
they  owe  to  their  mother's  care  and  love.  Both  (the 
words  of  one  are  few)  are  deeply  touching.  But  read 
the  burst  of  passionate  praise  and  love  to  God  with 
which  Augustine's  Confessions  open — read  the  account 
of  his  mother's  anxieties  during  his  wild  boyhood  and 
youth,  of  his  mother's  last  days,  and  of  the  last  con- 
versations between  mother  and  son  in  "the  house 
looking  into  the  garden  at   Ostia  ;  "  and  I  think  we 


no  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  ii 

shall  say  that  a  new  and  hitherto  unknown  fountain 
of  tenderness  and  peace  and  joy  had  been  opened, 
deep,  calm,  unfailing,  and  that  what  had  opened  it  was 
man's  new  convictions  of  his  relation  to  a  living  God 
of  love,  the  Lord  and  object  and  portion  of  hearts  and 
souls.  "  Thou  madest  us  for  Thyself,"  is  his  cry, 
"and  our  heart  is  restless  till  it  repose  in  Thee." 
Here  is  the  spring  and  secret  of  this  new  affection, 
this  new  power  of  loving : — 

"  What  art  Thou,  0  my  God  ?  What  art  Thou, 
I  beseech  Thee,  but  the  Lord  my  God  ?  For  who  is 
God,  besides  our  Lord, — Who  is  God,  besides  our  God  ? 
0  Thou  Supreme ;  most  merciful ;  most  just ;  most 
secret,  most  present ;  most  beautiful,  most  mighty, 
most  incomprehensible  ;  most  constant,  and  yet  chang- 
ing all  things ;  immutable,  never  new  and  never  old, 
and  yet  renewing  all  things  ;  ever  in  action,  and  ever 
quiet ;  keeping  all,  yet  needing  nothing ;  creating,  up- 
holding, filling,  protecting,  nourishing,  and  perfecting 
all  things.  .  .  .  And  what  shall  I  say  ?  0  my  God, 
my  life,  my  joy,  my  holy  dear  delight  !  Or  what  can 
any  man  say,  when  he  speaketh  of  Thee  ?  And  woe 
to  those  that  speak  not  of  Thee,  but  are  silent  in  Thy 
praise ;  for  even  those  who  speak  most  of  Thee  may 
be  accounted  to  be  but  dumb.  Have  mercy  upon  me, 
0  Lord,  that  I  may  speak  unto  Thee  and  praise  Thy 
name." 

To  the  light  -  hearted  Greeks  Christianity  had 
turned   its   face   of  severity,   of    awful  resolute  hope. 


II  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  m 

The  final  victory  of  Christ,  and,  meanwhile,  patient 
endurance  in  waiting  for  it — this  was  its  great  lesson 
to  their  race.  To  the  serious,  practical,  hard-natured 
Eoman,  it  showed  another  side — "  love,  joy,  peace  "  ; 
an  unknown  wealth  of  gladness  and  thankfulness  and 
great  rejoicing.  It  stirred  his  powerful  but  somewhat 
sluggish  soul ;  it  revealed  to  him  new  faculties,  dis- 
closed new  depths  of  affection,  won  him  to  new  aspira- 
tions and  new  nobleness.  And  this  was  a  new  and 
real  advance  and  rise  in  human  nature.  This  expan- 
sion of  the  power  of  feeling  and  loving  and  imagining, 
in  a  whole  race,  was  as  really  a  new  enlargement  of 
human  capacities,  a  new  endowment  and  instrument 
and  grace,  as  any  new  and  permanent  enlargement  of 
the  intellectual  powers ;  as  some  new  calculus,  or  the 
great  modern  conquests  in  mechanical  science,  or  in 
the  theory  and  development  of  music.  The  use  that 
men  or  generations  have  made  of  those  enlarged 
powers,  of  whatever  kind,  is  another  matter.  Each 
gift  has  its  characteristic  perversions ;  each  per- 
version has  its  certain  and  terrible  penalty.  We 
all  know  but  too  well  that  this  change  has  not  cured 
the  Southern  races  of  national  faults ;  that  the  tend- 
encies which  it  has  encouraged  have  been  greatly 
abused.  It  has  not  extirpated  falsehood,  idleness, 
passion,  ferocity.  That  quickened  and  fervid  imagina- 
tion, BO  open  to  impressions  and  eager  to  communicate 
them,  has  debased  religion  and  corrupted  art.  But  if 
this  cultivation  of  the  affections   and  stimulus  given 


112  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  LATIN  RACES  ii 

to  the  imagination  have  been  compatible  with  much 
evil, — with  much  acquiescence  in  wrong  and  absurdity, 
with  much  moral  stagnation,  much  inertness  of  con- 
science, much  looseness  of  principle,  —  it  must  be 
added,  with  some  of  the  darkest  crimes  and  foulest 
corruptions  in  history, — yet,  on  the  other  hand,  it  has 
been,  in  the  Southern  nations,  the  secret  of  their 
excellence,  and  their  best  influences.  This  new 
example  and  standard  of  sweetness,  of  courtesy,  of 
affectionateness,  of  generosity,  of  ready  sympathy,  of 
delight  in  the  warm  outpouring  of  the  heart,  of  grace, 
of  bright  and  of  pathetic  thought,  of  enthusiasm  for 
high  and  noble  beauty — what  would  the  world  have 
been  without  it  ?  Of  some  of  the  most  captivating, 
most  ennobling  instances  which  history  and  society 
have  to  show,  of  what  is  greatest,  purest,  best  in  our 
nature,  this  has  been  the  condition  and  the  secret. 
And  for  this  great  gift  and  prerogative,  that  they  have 
produced  not  only  great  men  like  those  of  the  elder 
race,  captains,  rulers,  conquerors,  —  not  only  men 
greater  than  they,  lords  in  the  realm  of  intelligence, 
its  discoverers  and  its  masters, — but  men  high  in  that 
kingdom  of  the  Spirit  and  of  goodness  which  is  as 
much  above  the  order  of  intellect  as  intellect  is  above 
material  things, — for  this  the  younger  races  of  the 
South  are  indebted  to  Christianity. 


LECTUEE    III 

CHKISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES 

At  the  time  when  the  Eoman  Empire  was  the  greatest 
power  in  the  world,  and  seemed  the  firmest,  a  race 
was  appearing  on  the  scene  which  excited  a  languid 
feeling  of  uneasiness  among  Eoman  statesmen,  and  an 
artificial  interest  among  Eoman  moralists.  The  states- 
man thought  that  this  race  might  be  troublesome  as  a 
neighbour,  if  it  was  not  brought  under  the  Eoman 
rule  of  conquest.  The  moralists  from  their  heights  of 
civilisation  looked  with  curiosity  on  new  examples  of 
fresh  and  vigorous  nature,  and  partly  in  disgust,  partly 
in  quest  of  unused  subjects  for  rhetorical  declamation, 
saw  in  them,  in  the  same  spirit  as  Eousseau  in  later 
times,  a  contrast  between  their  savage  virtues  and 
Eoman  degeneracy.  There  was  enough  in  their  love 
of  enterprise  and  love  of  fighting  to  make  their  wild 
and  dreary  country  a  good  exercise  -  ground  for  the 
practice  of  serious  war  by  the  Legions ;  and  gradually 
a  line  of  military  cantonments  along  the  frontier  of 
the  Ehine  and  the  Danube  grew  into  important  pro- 

"3 


114      CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES         in 

vincial  towns,  the  advanced  guard  of  Eoman  order 
against  the  darkness  and  anarchy  of  the  wilderness 
outside.  When  the  Eoman  chiefs  were  incapable  or 
careless,  the  daring  of  the  barbarians,  their  numbers, 
and  their  physical  strength  made  their  hostility  for- 
midable ;  the  Legions  of  Varus  perished  in  the  defiles 
of  the  German  forests,  by  a  disaster  like  the  defeat  of 
Braddock  in  America,  or  the  catastrophe  of  Afghani- 
stan ;  and  Roman  Emperors  were  proud  to  add  to 
their  titles  one  derived  from  successes,  or  at  least 
campaigns,  against  such  fierce  enemies.  The  Romans 
— why,  we  hardly  know — chose  to  call  them,  as  they 
called  the  Greeks,  by  a  name  which  was  not  their 
own ;  to  the  Romans  they  were  Germans ;  to  them- 
selves they  were  Diutisc,  Thiudisco,  Teutsch,  Deut- 
scher.  Latinised  into  Teutons.  What  they  were  in 
themselves,  in  their  ways  and  thoughts,  the  Romans 
in  general  cared  as  much  as  we  in  general  care  about 
the  black  tribes  of  the  interior  of  Africa  or  the  Tartar 
nomads  of  Central  Asia, — must  we  not  almost  add, 
about  the  vast  and  varied  populations  of  our  own 
India  ?  What  struck  the  Romans  most  was  that  alter- 
nation of  savage  energy  and  savage  indolence  and 
lethargy,  which  is  like  the  successive  ferocity  and 
torpor  of  the  vulture  and  the  tiger.  What  also  partly 
impressed  them  was  the  austerity  and  purity  of  their 
manners,  the  honour  paid  to  their  women,  the  amount 
of  labour  allotted  or  entrusted  to  them.  But,  after 
all,  they  were  barbarians,  not  very  interesting  except 


Ill        CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES        115 

to  philosophers,  not  very  menaciDg  except  to  the 
imagination  of  alarmists  ;  needing  to  be  kept  in  order, 
of  course,  as  all  wild  forces  do,  but  not  beyond  the 
strength,  the  majesty,  and  the  arts  of  the  Empire  to 
control  and  daunt.  Tacitus  describes  the  extermi- 
nation of  a  large  tribe  by  the  jealousy  and  combination 
of  its  neighbours;  he  speaks  of  it  with  satisfaction 
as  the  riddance  of  an  inconvenience,  and  expresses  an 
opinion  that  if  ever  the  fortunes  of  the  Empire  should 
need  it,  the  discord  of  its  barbarian  neighbours  might 
be  called  into  play.  But  not  even  he  seriously  appre- 
hended that  the  fortunes  of  the  Empire  would  fail 
before  the  barbarian  hordes.  There  was  one  apparently 
widespread  confederacy  among  the  tribes,  which  for  a 
time  disquieted  Marcus  Aurelius ;  but  the  storm 
passed — and  this  "  formidable  league,  the  only  one 
that  appears  in  the  two  first  centuries  of  the  Imperial 
history,  was  entirely  dissipated,  without  leaving  any 
traces  behind  in  Germany."  No  one  then  dreamed 
that  they  beheld  in  that  race  the  destroyers  and  sup- 
planters  of  the  ancient  civilisation.  Still  less  did  any 
one  then  dream  that  in  the  forests  and  morasses  of 
that  vast  region — "peopled  by  the  various  tribes  of 
one  great  nation,  and  comprising  the  whole  of  modern 
Germany,  Denmark,  Norway,  Sweden,  Finland,  Livonia, 
Prussia,  and  the  greater  part  of  Poland  " — were  the 
fathers  of  a  nobler  and  grander  world  than  any  that 
history  had  yet  known ;  that  here  was  the  race  which, 
under  many   names,   Franks   and   Allemanns,  Angles 


ii6       CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES        iii 

and  Saxons  and  Jutes,  Burgundians,  Goths,  Lombards, 
was  first  to  overrun,  and  then  revivify  exhausted 
nations ;  that  it  was  a  race  which  was  to  assert  its 
chief  and  lordly  place  in  Europe,  to  occupy  half  of  a 
new-found  world,  to  inherit  India,  to  fill  the  islands  of 
unknown  seas ;  to  be  the  craftsmen,  the  traders,  the 
colonists,  the  explorers  of  the  world.  That  it  should 
be  the  parent  of  English  sailors,  of  German  soldiers, 
this  may  not  be  so  marvellous.  That  from  it  should 
have  come  conquerors,  heroes,  statesmen,  "men  of 
blood  and  iron," — nay,  great  rulers  and  mighty  kings 
— the  great  Charles,  Saxon  Ottos,  Franconian  Henrys, 
Swabian  Frederics,  Norman  Williams,  English  Edwards, 
seems  in  accordance  with  the  genius  of  the  country- 
men of  Arminius,  the  destroyer  of  the  legions  of 
Augustus.  But  it  is  another  thing  to  think  that  from 
the  wild  people  described  by  Tacitus,  or  in  the  ninth 
chapter  of  Gibbon,  should  have  sprung  Shakespeare 
and  Bacon,  Erasmus  and  Albert  Diirer,  Leibnitz  and 
Goethe ;  that  this  race  should  have  produced  an  Eng- 
lish court  of  justice,  English  and  German  workshops 
of  thought  and  art,  English  and  German  homes, 
Enghsh  and  German  religious  feeling,  and  religious 
earnestness. 

I  need  not  remind  you  of  the  history  of  this 
wonderful  transition  —  a  transition  lasting  through 
centuries,  from  barbarism  to  civilisation.  The  story 
is  everywhere  more  or  less  the  same.  First  came  a 
period  of  overthrow,  wasting,  and  destruction.     Then, 


Ill        CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES       117 

instead  of  the  fierce  tribes  retaining  their  old  savage 
and  predatory  habits,  they  show  a  singular  aptitude 
for  change ;  they  settle  in  the  lands  which  they  have 
overrun ;  they  pass  rapidly  into  what,  in  comparison 
with  their  former  state,  is  a  civil  order,  with  laws, 
rights,  and  the  framework  of  society.  Angles  and 
Saxons  and  Danes  in  Britain,  Norsemen  by  sea,  and 
Franks  and  Burgundians  across  the  Ehine  in  Gaul, 
come  to  ravage  and  plunder,  and  stay  to  found  a 
country ;  they  arrive  pirates  and  destroyers,  urged  on 
by  a  kind  of  frenzy  of  war  and  ruin,  a  kind  of  mad- 
ness against  peaceful  life  ;  and  when  the  storm  in 
which  they  come  has  passed  away,  we  see  that  in  the 
midst  of  the  confusion  they  have  created  the  begin- 
nings of  new  nations  ;  we  see  the  foundations  dis- 
tinctly laid  of  England,  Normandy,  and  France.  And 
next,  when  once  the  barbarian  is  laid  aside,  and  poli- 
tical community  begins,  though  the  early  stages  may 
be  of  the  rudest  and  most  imperfect,  beset  with  the 
remains  of  old  savagery,  and  sometimes  apparently 
overlaid  by  it,  yet  the  idea  of  civil  society  and  govern- 
ment henceforth  grows  with  ever -accelerating  force, 
with  ever-increasing  influence.  It  unfolds  itself  in 
various  forms  and  with  unequal  success ;  but  on  the 
whole  the  development  of  it,  though  often  retarded 
and  often  fitful  and  irregular,  has  never  been 
arrested  since  the  time  when  it  began.  The  tribes 
of  the  same  stock  which  continued  to  occupy  the 
centre  of  Europe  had  the  same  general  history  as  their 


ii8      CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES        iii 

foreign  brethren.  The  great  events  of  conquest,  the 
contact  of  civilisation  outside,  the  formation  and 
policy  of  new  kingdoms,  all  reacted  on  the  home  of 
the  race ;  Germany  became  the  established  seat  of  an 
Empire  which  inherited  the  name  and  the  claims  of 
Eome,  the  complement  and  often  the  rival  of  the  new 
spiritual  power  which  ruled  in  the  ancient  Imperial 
city. 

Many  causes  combined  to  produce  this  result. 
The  qualities  and  endowments  of  the  race,  possibly 
their  traditional  institutions,  certainly  their  readiness 
to  take  in  new  ideas  and  to  adapt  themselves  to  great 
changes  in  life  and  manners ;  their  quickness  in  seiz- 
ing, in  the  midst  of  wreck  and  decline,  the  points 
which  the  ancient  order  presented  for  building  up  a 
new  and  advancing  one;  their  instinct,  wild  and  un- 
tamed as  they  were,  for  the  advantages  of  law ;  their 
curious  power  of  combining  what  was  Eoman  and 
foreign  with  what  was  tenaciously  held  to  as  Teutonic 
and  ancestral ;  their  energy  and  manliness  of  purpose, 
their  unique  and  unconquerable  elasticity  of  nature, 
which  rose  again  and  again  out  of  what  seemed  fatal 
corruption,  as  it  rose  out  of  defeat  and  overthrow  ; — 
all  this  explains  the  great  transformation  of  the  invad- 
ing tribes,  the  marvellous  history  of  modern  Europe. 
It  was  thus,  no  doubt,  that  the  elder  civilisations  of 
Greece  and  Eome  had  arisen  out  of  elements  probably 
once  as  wild  and  unpromising  as  those  from  which  our 
younger   one   has   sprung  ;  it  was  thus  that,  coming 


Ill         CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES       119 

from  the  mountains  and  the  woods,  from  the  chase  or 
the  pasture-grounds,  they  learned,  in  ways  and  steps 
now  hidden  from  us — 

To  create 
A  household  and  a  father-land, 
A  city  and  a  state. 

But  the  fortunes  of  the  elder  and  the  newer  civil- 
isations have  hitherto  been  different  in  fruit  and  in 
permanence,  and  a  force  was  at  work  in  moulding  the 
latter  which  was  absent  from  the  earlier.  The  Teu- 
tonic race  found  an  unknown  and  unexpected  spiritual 
power  before  them,  such  as  early  Hellenes  and  Latins 
had  never  known.  They  found,  wherever  they  came, 
a  strange,  organised  polity,  one  and  united  in  a  vast 
brotherhood,  coextensive  with  the  Empire,  but  not  of 
it,  nor  of  its  laws  and  institutions ;  earthly  in  its  out- 
ward aspect,  but  the  representative  and  minister  of  a 
perpetual  and  ever-present  kingdom  of  heaven;  un- 
armed, defenceless  in  the  midst  of  never-ceasing  war, 
and  yet  inspiring  reverence  and  receiving  homage, 
and  ruling  by  the  word  of  conviction,  of  knowledge, 
of  persuasion;  arresting  and  startling  the  new  con- 
querors with  the  message  of  another  world.  In  the 
changes  which  came  over  the  invading  race,  this 
undreamt-of  power,  which  they  met  in  their  career, 
had    the    deepest    and    most   eventful   share.^       That 

^  In  the  new  era,  the  first  thing  we  meet  with  is  the  religious 
society  ;  it  was  the  most  advanced,  the  strongest  ;  whether  in  the 
Roman  municipality,  or  at  the  side  of  the  barbarian  kings,  or  in  the 


I20      CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES         in 

great  society,  which  had  half  converted  the  Empire, 
converted  and  won  over  its  conquerors.  In  their 
political  and  social  development  it  took  the  lead  in 
conjunction  with  their  born  leaders.  Legislation, 
political  and  social,  the  reconstruction  of  a  society  in 
chaos,  the  fusion  of  old  things  with  new,  the  adapta- 
tion of  the  forms,  the  laws,  the  traditions  of  one  time 
to  the  wants  of  another,  the  smoothing  of  jars,  the 
reconciling  of  conflicting  interests,  and  still  more  of 
conflicting  and  dimly-grasped  ideas,  all  that  laid  the 
foundations  and  sowed  the  seeds  of  civil  order  in  all 
its  diversified  shapes,  as  it  was  to  be,  —  was  the 
work  not  only  of  kings,  princes,  and  emperors, 
but,    outwardly    as    much,    morally    much    more,    of 

graduated  ranks  of  the  conquerors  who  have  become  lords  of  the  land, 
everywhere  we  observe  the  presence  and  the  influence  of  the  Church. 
From  the  fourth  to  the  thirteenth  century  it  is  the  Church  which 
always  marches  in  the  front  rank  of  civilisation.  I  must  call  your 
attention  to  a  fact  which  stands  at  the  head  of  all  others,  and  charac- 
terises the  Christian  Church  in  general — a  fact  which,  so  to  speak,  has 
decided  its  destiny.  This  fact  is  the  unity  of  the  Church,  the  unity  of 
the  Christian  society,  irrespectively  of  all  diversities  of  time,  of  place, 
of  power,  of  language,  of  origin.  Wonderful  phenomenon  !  It  is  just 
at  the  moment  when  the  Roman  Empire  is  breaking  up  and  dis- 
appearing that  the  Christian  Church  gathers  itself  up  and  takes  its 
definitive  form.  Political  unity  perishes,  religious  unity  emerges. 
Populations  endlessly  different  in  origin,  habits,  speech,  destiny,  rush 
upon  the  scene  ;  all  becomes  local  and  partial ;  every  enlarged  idea, 
every  general  institution,  every  great  social  arrangement  is  lost  sight 
of ;  and  in  this  moment  this  Christian  Church  proclaims  most  loudly 
the  unity  of  its  teaching,  the  universality  of  its  law.  And  from  the 
bosom  of  the  most  frightful  disorder  the  world  has  ever  seen  has 
arisen  the  largest  and  purest  idea,  perhaps,  which  ever  drew  men 
together, — the  idea  of  a  spiritual  society. — Guizot,  Lee.  xii.  p.  230. 


Ill         CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES       121 

tlie  priests,  bishops,  and  councils  of  the  Christian 
Church. 

These  results  and  their  efficient  causes  are  in  a 
general  way  beyond  dispute.  But  can  we  trace,  be- 
sides these  political  and  social  changes,  any  ethical 
changes  of  corresponding  importance  ?  Such  changes, 
of  course,  there  must  have  been,  in  populations  alter- 
ing from  one  state  to  another,  where  the  interval 
between  these  states  is  so  enormous  as  that  between 
uncivilised  and  civilised  life.  But  it  is  conceivable, 
though,  of  course,  not  likely,  that  they  might  have 
been  of  little  interest  to  those  who  care  about  human 
goodness  and  the  development  of  the  moral  side  of 
human  nature.  China  has  passed  into  a  remarkable 
though  imperfect  civilisation,  but  without  perceptible 
moral  rise.  Or  the  changes  may  be  perceptible  only 
in  individual  instances,  and  not  on  that  large  scale 
which  we  take  when  we  speak  of  national  character. 
Do  we  see  in  the  Teutonic  races  changes  analogous  to 
those  which  we  believe  we  can  trace  in  the  Greek  and 
the  Latin  races  since  they  passed  under  the  discipline 
of  Christianity  ? 

I  think  we  can.  We  must  remember  that  we  are 
on  gro|pd  where  our  generalisations  can  but  approxi- 
mate to  the  true  state  of  the  case,  and  that  when  we 
speak  of  national  character  we  speak  of  a  thing  which, 
though  very  striking  at  a  distance  and  in  gross,  is 
vague  and  tremulous  in  its  outlines,  and  in  detail  is 
full  of  exceptions  and  contradictory  instances.     Come 


122       CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES         in 

too  near  it,  and  try  to  hold  it  too  tightly,  and  it  seems 
to  elude  our  grasp,  or,  just  when  we  have  seized  a 
distinct  thought,  to  escape  from  us.  We  are  made  to 
feel  by  objectors  that  what  is  shared  by  so  many 
individual  and  definite  characters,  and  shared  in  such 
endlessly  varying  proportions,  must  be  looked  upon 
more  as  an  ideal  than  as  anything  definitely  and 
tangibly  reahsed.  And,  again,  when  we  speak  of 
sometliing  common  to  the  Teutonic  race,  we  must 
remember  the  differences  between  its  different  great 
branches, — in  Germany,  in  the  Netherlands,  in  tlie 
Scandinavian  countries,  in  England  and  its  colonies. 
But  for  all  that,  there  seem  to  be  some  common  and 
characteristic  features  recognisable  in  all  of  them,  in 
distinction  from  the  Latin  or  Latinised  races ;  gifts 
and  qualities  to  be  found,  of  course,  in  individuals  of 
the  other  races,  but  not  prominent  in  a  general 
survey ;  ideals  if  you  like,  but  ideals  which  all  who 
are  under  the  ordinary  impressions  of  the  race  wel- 
come as  expressing  what  they  think  the  highest  and 
presuppose  as  their  standard.  There  must  be  some 
reahty  attaching  to  such  ideals,  or  they  would  never 
have  become  ideals  to  which  men  delight  to  look. 
Fully  admitting  all  the  reserves  and  abatements 
necessary,  we  can  speak  of  general  points  of  char- 
acter in  the  Teutonic  race  and  try  to  trace  their 
formation. 

There  is  a  great  and  important  difference  in  the 
conditions  under  which  Christianity  came  to  the  dif- 


Ill         CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES       123 

ferent  populations  of  the  old  world.  To  Greeks  and 
to  Latins  it  came  as  to  people  who  had  long  been 
under  a  civilisation  of  a  high  order,  whose  habits  and 
ideas  were  formed  by  it,  and  who  had  gone  further  in 
all  that  it  can  do  for  men  than  had  ever  been  known 
in  the  world  before.  To  the  Teutonic  races,  on  the 
contrary,  it  came  when  they  had  still  to  learn  almost 
the  first  elements  of  civilised  life ;  and  it  was  along 
with  Christian  teaching  that  they  learned  them.  It 
took  them  fresh  from  barbarism,  and  was  the  fountain 
and  the  maker  of  their  civilisation.  There  was  yet 
another  difference.  Christianity  gained  its  hold  on 
the  Greeks  and  Eomans  in  the  time  of  their  dee23 
disasters,  in  the  overthrow  and  breaking  up  of  society, 
amid  the  suffering  and  anguish  of  hopeless  defeat. 
It  came  to  them  as  conquered,  subjugated,  down- 
trodden races,  in  the  lowest  ebb  of  their  fortunes. 
It  came  to  the  Teutonic  races  as  to  conquerors, 
flushed  with  success,  in  the  mounting  flood  of  their 
new  destiny.  In  one  case  it  had  to  do  with  men 
cast  down  from  their  high  estate,  stricken  and  reel- 
ing under  the  unexampled  judgments  of  God ;  it 
associated  itself  with  their  sorrows ;  it  awoke  and 
deepened  in  them  the  consciousness  of  the  accumu- 
lated and  frightful  guilt  of  ages ;  it  unlocked  and 
subdued  their  hearts  by  its  inexhaustible  sympathy 
and  awful  seriousness ;  it  rallied  and  knit  them  once 
more  together  in  their  helplessness  into  an  unearthly 
and  eternal  citizenship ;   it  was  their  one  and  great 


124      CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES         iii 

consoler  in  the  miseries  of  the  world.  In  the  Chris- 
tian literature  of  the  falling  Empire  in  the  fourth  and 
fifth  centuries,  in  such  books  as  St.  Augustine's  City 
of  God,  or  Salvian's  book  on  the  Government  of  God, 
we  may  see,  in  its  nascent  state,  the  influence  of 
Christianity  on  the  shattered  and  afflicted  race  which 
had  once  been  the  lords  of  the  world.  But  with  the 
new  nations  which  had  arisen  to  be  their  masters  the 
business  of  Christianity  and  the  Church  was  not  so 
much  to  comfort  as  to  tame.  They  had  not  yet  the 
deep  sins  of  civilisation  to  answer  for.  The  pains  and 
sorrows  of  all  human  existence  had  not  to  them  been 
rendered  more  acute  by  the  habits,  the  knowledge,  the 
intense  feeling  of  refined  and  developed  life.  They 
suffered,  of  course,  like  all  men,  and  they  sinned  Kke 
all  men.  But  to  them  the  ministry  of  Christianity 
was  less  to  soothe  suffering,  less  even,  as  with  the 
men  of  the  Eoman  world,  to  call  to  repentance  for  sins 
against  conscience  and  light,  than  to  lay  hold  on  fresh 
and  impetuous  natures ;  to  turn  them  from  the  first 
in  the  right  direction ;  to  control  and  regenerate  noble 
instincts  ;  to  awaken  conscience ;  to  humble  pride  ;  to 
curb  luxuriant  and  self-reliant  strength ;  to  train  and 
educate  and  apply  to  high  ends  the  force  of  powerful 
wills  and  masculine  characters.  And,  historically, 
this  appears  to  have  been  its  earliest  work  with  its 
Teutonic  converts.  The  Church  is  their  schoolmaster, 
their  legislator,  their  often  considerate,  and  sometimes 
over-indulgent,  but  always  resolute,  minister  of  discip- 


Ill         CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES      125 

line.  Of  course,  as  time  went  on,  this  early  office 
was  greatly  enlarged  and  diversified.  But  it  seems  to 
me  that  the  effects  of  Christianity  on  their  national 
character,  as  it  was  first  forming  under  religious  in- 
fluences, are  to  be  traced  to  the  conditions  under 
which  those  influences  were  first  exerted. 

I  have  said  that  the  great  obvious  change  observ- 
able in  the  Latin  nations  since  they  passed  under 
Christianity  seemed  to  me  to  be  the  development  of 
the  affections ;  the  depths  of  the  heart  were  reached 
and  touched  as  they  never  were  before ;  its  fountains 
were  unsealed.  In  the  same  school  the  German  races 
were  made  by  degrees  familiar  with  the  most  wonder- 
ful knowledge  given  here  to  man  to  know, — an  insight 
into  the  depths  of  his  own  being,  the  steady  contem- 
plation of  the  secrets,  the  mysteries,  the  riddles  of  his 
soul  and  his  life.  They  learned  this  lesson  first  from 
Latin  teachers,  who  had  learned  it  themselves  in  the 
Psalms,  the  Gospels,  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul  and  St. 
John,  and  in  whom  thought  had  stirred  the  deepest 
emotions,  and  kindled  spontaneously  into  the  new 
language  of  religious  devotion.  How  profoundly  this 
affected  the  unfolding  character  of  the  Teutonic 
peoples ;  how  the  tenderness,  the  sweetness,  the 
earnestness,  the  solemnity,  the  awfulness  of  the 
Christian  faith  sank  into  their  hearts,  diffused  itself 
through  their  life,  allied  itself  by  indestructible  bonds 
with  what  was  dearest  and  what  was  highest,  with 
their    homes,    their    assemblies,    their    crowns,    their 


126      CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES         iii 

graves — all  this  is  marked  on  their  history,  and 
reveals  itself  in  their  literature.  Among  them,  as 
among  the  Latin  races,  religion  opened  new  springs  in 
the  heart,  and  made  new  channels  for  the  affections ; 
channels,  as  deep,  as  full,  as  diversified,  in  the  North 
as  in  the  South ;  though  they  were  less  on  the  sur- 
face; though  they  sometimes  wanted  freedom  and 
naturalness  in  their  flow ;  though  their  charm  and 
beauty,  as  well  as  their  degeneracy  or  extravagance, 
forced  themselves  less  on  the  eye.  "We  may  appreciate 
very  variously  the  forms  and  phases  of  religion  and 
religious  history  in  the  Northern  races.  You  may 
find  in  them  the  difference,  and  the  difference  is 
immense,  ranging  between  mere  vague,  imaginative, 
religious  sentiment,  and  the  profoundest  convictions 
of  Christian  faith.  The  moment  you  touch  particular 
questions,  instantly  the  divergences  of  judgment  and 
sympathy  appear,  as  to  what  is  religion.  But  the 
obvious  experience  of  facts  and  language,  and  the 
e\4dence  of  foreigners  ahke  attest  how,  in  one  form 
or  another,  rehgion  has  penetrated  deeply  into  the 
national  character  both  of  Germany  and  England ; 
how  serious  and  energetic  is  the  religious  element  in 
it,  and  with  what  tenacity  it  has  stood  its  ground 
against  the  direst  storms. 

But  the  German  stock  is  popularly  credited  with 
an  especial  value  for  certain  great  classes  of  virtues, 
of  which  the  germs  are  perhaps  discernible  in  its  early 
history,  but  which,  in  their  real  nature,  have  been  the 


Ill         CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES       127 

growth  of  its  subsequent  experience  and  training.  It 
is,  of  course,  childish  and  extravagant  to  make  any 
claims  of  this  kind  without  a  vast  margin  for  signal 
exceptions ;  all  that  can  justly  be  said  is  that  public 
opinion  has  a  special  esteem  and  admiration  for 
certain  virtues,  and  that  the  vices  and  faults  which  it 
specially  dislikes  are  their  opposites.  And  the  virtues 
and  classes  of  virtues  which  have  been  in  a  manner 
canonised  among  us,  which  we  hold  in  honour,  not 
because  they  are  rare,  but  because  they  are  regarded 
as  congenial  and  belonging  to  us, — the  virtues  our 
regard  for  which  colours  our  judgments,  if  it  does  not 
always  influence  our  actions, — are  the  group  of  virtues 
connected  with  Truth ;  the  virtues  of  Manliness ;  the 
virtues  which  have  relation  to  Law ;  and  the  virtues 
of  Purity. 

I  mean  by  the  virtues  connected  with  Truth,  not 
only  the  search  after  what  is  true,  and  the  speaking 
of  what  is  known  or  believed  to  be  true,  but  the 
regard  generally  for  what  is  real,  substantial,  genuine, 
solid,  which  is  shown  in  some  portions  of  the  race  by 
a  distrust,  sometimes  extreme,  of  theories,  of  intel- 
lectual subtleties,  of  verbal  accuracy, — the  taste  for 
plainness  and  simplicity  of  life  and  manners  and 
speech, — the  strong  sense  of  justice,  large,  unflinching, 
consistent ;  the  power  and  will  to  be  fair  to  a  strong 
opponent,  —  the  impatience  of  affectation  and  pre- 
tence ;  not  merely  the  disgust  or  amusement,  but  the 
deep  moral    indignation,  at  shams  and  imposture, — 


128      CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES         in 

the  dislike  of  over -statement  and  exaggeration;  the 
fear  of  professing  too  much ;  the  shame  and  horror  of 
seeming  to  act  a  part ;  the  sacrifice  of  form  to  sub- 
stance ;  the  expectation  and  demand  that  a  man 
should  say  what  he  really  means  —  say  it  well, 
forcibly,  elegantly,  if  he  can ;  but  anyhow,  rather  say 
it  clumsily  and  awkwardly  than  say  anything  hut 
what  he  means,  or  sacrifice  his  real  thought  to  his 
rhetoric.  I  mean,  too,  that  unforced  and  honest 
modesty  both  of  intellect  and  conduct  which  comes 
naturally  to  any  man  who  takes  a  true  measure  of 
himself  and  his  doings.  Under  the  virtues  of  Manli- 
ness, I  mean  those  that  belong  to  a  serious  estimate  of 
the  uses,  the  capacities,  the  call  of  human  life ;  the 
duty  of  hard  work ;  the  value  and  jealousy  for  true 
liberty ;  independence  of  soul,  deep  sense  of  responsi- 
bihty  and  strength  not  to  shrink  from  it,  steadiness, 
endurance,  perseverance ;  the  power  of  sustaining 
cheerfully  disappointment  and  defeat ;  the  temper 
not  to  make  much  of  trifles,  whether  vexations  or 
pleasures.  I  include  that  great  self  -  commanding 
power,  to  which  we  give  the  name  of  moral  courage ; 
which  makes  a  man  who  knows  and  measures  all  that 
his  decision  involves,  not  afraid  to  be  alone  against 
numbers ;  not  afraid,  when  he  knows  that  he  is  right, 
of  the  consciousness  of  the  disapprobation  of  his  fel- 
lows, of  the  face,  the  voice,  the  frown,  the  laugh,  of 
those  against  him ; — moral  courage,  by  which  a  man 
holds  his  own  judgment,  if  reason  and  conscience  bid 


Ill         CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES       129 

him,  against  his  own  friends,  against  his  own  side,  and 
of  which,  perhaps,  the  highest  form  is  that  by  which 
he  is  able  to  resist,  not  the  sneers  and  opposition  of 
the  bad,  but  the  opinion  and  authority  of  the  good. 
All  these  are  such  qualities  as  spring  from  the  deep 
and  pervading  belief  that  this  life  is  a  place  of  trial, 
probation,  discipline,  effort,  to  be  followed  by  a  real 
judgment.  I  mean  by  the  virtues  having  relation  to 
Law,  the  readiness  to  submit  private  interests  and 
wishes  to  the  control  of  public  authority ;  to  throw  a 
consecration  around  the  unarmed  forms  and  organs  of 
this  authority ;  to  obey  for  conscience  sake,  and  out  of 
a  free  and  loyal  obedience,  and  not  from  fear:  the 
self-control,  the  patience,  which,  in  spite  of  the  tre- 
mendous inequalities  and  temptations  of  human  con- 
ditions, keep  society  peacefully  busy;  which  enable 
men,  even  under  abuses,  wrong,  provocation,  to  claim 
a  remedy  and  yet  wait  for  it ;  which  makes  them  have 
faith  in  the  ultimate  victory  of  right  and  sound 
reason ;  which  teaches  men  in  the  keen  battles  of 
political  life,  as  it  has  been  said,  to  "quarrel  by 
rule " ;  which  instinctively  recoils  from  revolution 
under  the  strongest  desire  for  change.  The  phrase, 
a  "law-abiding"  people,  may  as  a  boast  be  sometimes 
very  rudely  contradicted  by  facts ;  but  it  expresses  an 
idea  and  a  standard.  I  add  the  virtues  of  Purity — 
not  forgetting  how  very  little  any  race  or  people  can 
venture  to  boast  over  its  neighbours  for  its  reverence 
and  faithfulness  to  these  high  laws  of  God  and  man's 


I30      CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES         iii 

true  nature ;  but  remembering  also  all  that  has  made 
family  life  so  sacred  and  so  noble  among  us ;  all  that 
has  made  German  and  English  households  such  schools 
of  goodness  in  its  strongest  and  its  gentlest  forms,  such 
shrines  of  love,  and  holiness,  and  peace,  the  secret 
places  where  man's  deepest  gladness  and  deepest  griefs 
— never,  in  truth,  very  far  apart — meet  and  are  shel- 
tered. These  are  things  which,  in  different  propor- 
tions and  different  degrees  of  perfection,  we  believe 
to  have  marked  the  development  of  character  in  the 
German  races.  I  do  not  say,  far  indeed  from  it,  that 
all  this  is  to  be  seen  among  us, — that  we  do  according 
to  all  this ;  but  I  do  say  that  we  always  honour  it, 
always  acknowledge  it  our  only  allowable  standard. 

These  things  are  familiar  enough.  But  it  is  not 
always  so  familiar  to  us  to  measure  the  immense 
interval  between  these  types  of  character  and  the  rude 
primitive  elements  out  of  which  they  have  been 
moulded,  or  to  gauge  the  force  of  the  agencies  which 
laid  hold  of  those  elements,  when  it  was  quite  within 
the  compass  of  possibility  that  they  might  have  re- 
ceived an  entirely  different  impulse  and  direction ; — 
agencies  which  turned  their  wild,  aimless,  apparently 
untameable,  energies  from  their  path  of  wasting  and 
ruin,  into  courses  in  which  they  were  slowly  to  be 
fashioned  anew  to  the  highest  uses  and  purposes  of 
human  life.  There  is  nothing  inconceivable  in  the 
notion  that  what  the  invading  tribes  were  in  their 
original  seats  for  centuries  they  might  have  continued 


Ill         CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES       131 

to  be  in  their  new  conquests ;  that  the  invasion  might 
have  been  simply  the  spread  and  perpetuation  of  a 
hopeless  and  fatal  barbarism.  As  it  was,  a  long  time 
passed  before  it  was  clear  that  barbarism  had  not 
taken  possession  of  the  world.  But  the  one  power 
which  could  really  cope  with  it,  the  one  power  to 
which  it  would  listen,  which  dared  to  deal  with  these 
terrible  newcomers  with  the  boldness  and  frankness 
given  by  conviction  and  hope,  was  the  Christian 
Church.  It  had  in  its  possession,  influence,  ideas, 
doctrines,  laws,  of  which  itself  knew  not  the  full 
regenerating  power.  We  look  back  to  the  early  acts 
and  policy  of  the  Church  towards  the  new  nations, 
their  kings  and  their  people ;  the  ways  and  works  of 
her  missionaries  and  lawgivers,  Ulfilas  among  the 
Goths,  Augustine  in  Kent,  Eemigius  in  France,  Boni- 
face in  Germany,  Anschar  in  the  North,  the  Irish 
Columban  in  Burgundy  and  Switzerland,  Benedict  at 
Monte  Cassino  ;  or  the  reforming  kings,  the  Arian 
Theodoric,  the  great  German  Charles,  the  great  English 
Alfred.  Measured  by  the  light  and  the  standards  they 
have  helped  us  to  attain  to,  their  methods  no  doubt 
surprise,  disappoint — it  may  be,  revolt  us ;  and  all 
that  we  dwell  upon  is  the  childishness,  or  the  imper- 
fect morality,  of  their  attempts.  But  if  there  is  any- 
thing certain  in  history,  it  is  that  in  these  rough 
communications  of  the  deepest  truths,  in  these  often 
questionable  modes  of  ruling  minds  and  souls,  the 
seeds  were  sown  of  all  that  was   to  make  the  hope 


132      CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES         in 

and  the  glory  of  the  foremost  nations.  They  im- 
pressed upon  men  in  their  strong,  often  coarse,  way 
that  truth  was  the  most  precious  and  most  sacred  of 
things, —  that  truth-seeking,  truth- speaking,  truth  in 
life,  was  man's  supreme  duty, — the  enjoyment  of  it  his 
highest  blessedness  on  earth ;  and  they  did  this,  even 
though  they  often  fell  miserably  short  of  the  lesson  of 
their  words,  even  though  they  sometimes,  to  gain  high 
ends,  turned  aside  into  the  convenient,  tempting  paths 
of  untruth.  Truth,  as  it  is  made  the  ultimate  ground 
of  religion  in  the  New  Testament ;  Truth,  as  a  thing 
of  reality  and  not  of  words ;  Truth,  as  a  cause  to  con- 
tend for  in  hfelong  struggle,  and  gladly  to  die  for — 
this  was  the  new,  deep,  fruitful  idea  implanted,  at  the 
awakening  dawn  of  thought,  in  the  infant  civilisation 
of  the  North.  It  became  rooted,  strong,  obstinate ;  it 
bore  many  and  various  fruits ;  it  was  the  parent  of 
fervent,  passionate  belief — the  parent,  too,  of  passionate 
scepticism ;  it  produced  persecution  and  intolerance ; 
it  produced  resolute  and  unsparing  reformations,  in- 
dignant uprisings  against  abuses  and  impostures.  But 
this  great  idea  of  truth,  whatever  be  its  consequences, 
the  assumption  of  its  attainableness,  of  its  precious- 
ness,  comes  to  us,  as  a  popular  beUef  and  axiom,  from 
the  New  Testament,  through  the  word  and  ministry  of 
the  Christian  Church,  from  its  first  contact  with  the 
new  races ;  it  is  the  distinct  product  of  that  great 
claim,  for  the  first  time  made  to  all  the  world  by  the 
Gospel,  and    earnestly  responded    to    by  strong    and 


Ill         CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES       133 

simple  natures — the  claim  of  reality  and  truth  made 
in  the  words  of  Him  who  said,  "  I  am  the  Way,  and 
the  Truth,  and  the  Life." 

I  have  spoken  of  three  other  groups  of  virtues 
which  are  held  in  special  regard  and  respect  among 
us — those  connected  with  manliness  and  hard  work, 
with  reverence  for  law  and  liberty,  and  with  pure 
family  life.  The  rudiments  and  tendencies  out  of 
which  these  have  grown  appear  to  have  been  early 
marked  in  the  German  races ;  but  they  were  only 
rudiments,  existing  in  company  with  much  wilder  and 
stronger  elements,  and  liable,  amid  the  changes  and 
chances  of  barbarian  existence,  to  be  paralysed  or 
trampled  out.  No  mere  barbarian  virtues  could  by 
themselves  have  stood  the  trial  of  having  won  by  con- 
quest the  wealth,  the  lands,  the  power  of  Eome.  But 
their  guardian  was  there.  What  Christianity  did  for 
these  natural  tendencies  to  good  was  to  adopt  them, 
to  watch  over  them,  to  discipline,  to  consolidate  them. 
The  energy  which  warriors  were  accustomed  to  put 
forth  in  their  efforts  to  conquer,  the  missionaries  and 
ministers  of  Christianity  exhibited  in  their  enterprises 
of  conversion  and  teaching.  The  crowd  of  unknown 
saints  whose  names  fill  the  calendars,  and  live,  some 
of  them,  only  in  the  titles  of  our  churches,  mainly 
represent  the  age  of  heroic  spiritual  ventures,  of  which 
we  see  glimpses  in  the  story  of  St.  Boniface,  the  apostle 
of  Germany ;  of  St.  Columban  and  St.  Gall,  wandering 
from  Ireland  to  reclaim  the  barbarians  of  the  Burgun- 


134      CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES         iii 

dian  deserts  and  of  the  shores  of  the  Swiss  lakes.  It 
was  among  men  like  these — men  who  were  then 
termed  emphatically  "  men  of  religion  "  —  that  the 
new  races  first  saw  the  example  of  life  ruled  by  a 
great  and  serious  purpose,  which  yet  was  not  one  of 
ambition  or  the  excitement  of  war ;  a  life  of  deliber- 
ate and  steady  industry,  of  hard  and  uncomplaining 
labour ;  a  life  as  full  of  activity  in  peace,  of  stout  and 
brave  work,  as  a  warrior's  was  wont  to  be  in  the  camp, 
on  the  march,  in  the  battle.  It  was  in  these  men, 
and  in  the  Christianity  which  they  taught,  and  which 
inspired  and  governed  them,  that  the  fathers  of  our 
modern  nations  first  saw  exemphfied  the  sense  of 
human  responsibility,  first  learned  the  nobleness  of  a 
ruled  and  disciplined  life,  first  enlarged  their  thoughts 
of  the  uses  of  existence,  first  were  taught  the  dignity 
and  sacredness  of  honest  toil.  These  great  axioms  of 
modern  life  passed  silently  from  the  special  homes  of 
religious  employment  to  those  of  civil;  from  the 
cloisters  and  cells  of  men  who,  when  they  were  not 
engaged  in  worship,  were  engaged  in  field-work  or 
book-work, — clearing  the  forest,  extending  cultivation, 
multiplying  manuscripts, — to  the  guild  of  the  crafts- 
man, the  shop  of  the  trader,  the  study  of  the  scholar. 
Eeligion  generated  and  fed  these  ideas  of  what  was 
manly  and  worthy  in  man.  Once  started,  they  were 
reinforced  from  other  sources  ;  thought  and  experience 
enriched,  corrected,  and  co-ordinated  them.  But  it 
was  the  power  and  sanction  of  a  religion  and  a  creed 


Ill         CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES      135 

which  first  broke  men  into  their  yoke  that  now  seems 
so  easy,  gradually  wrought  their  charm  over  human 
restlessness  and  indolence  and  pride,  gradually  recon- 
ciled mankind  to  the  ideas,  and  the  ideas  to  mankind, 
gradually  impressed  them  on  that  vague  but  yet  real 
thing  which  we  call  the  general  thought  and  mind  of 
a  nation.  It  was  this,  too,  that  wrought  a  further 
and  more  remarkable  change  in  elevating  and  refining 
the  old  manliness  of  the  race.  It  brought  into  the 
dangerous  life  of  the  warrior  the  sense  of  a  common 
humanity,  the  great  idea  of  self-sacrificing  duty.  It 
was  this  religion  of  mercy  and  peace,  and  yet  of  strength 
and  purpose,  which  out  of  the  wild  and  conflicting 
elements  of  what  we  caU  the  age  of  chivalry  gradually 
formed  a  type  of  character  in  which  gentleness,  gene- 
rosity, sympathy  were  blended  with  the  most  daring 
courage, — the  Christian  soldier,  as  we  have  known 
him  in  the  sternest  tasks  and  extremest  needs,  in  con- 
quest and  in  disaster,  ruling,  judging,  civilising.  It  was 
the  sense  of  duty  derived  from  this  religion  to  the  tra- 
ditions and  habits  of  a  great  service,  which  made  strong 
men  stand  fast  in  the  face  of  death,  while  the  weak 
were  saved,  on  the  deck  of  the  sinking  Birhenhead. 

So  with  respect  to  law  and  freedom.  I  suppose 
that  it  may  be  set  down  as  a  characteristic  of  the  race, 
that  in  very  various  degrees  and  proportions,  and 
moving  faster  or  slower  in  different  places  and  times, 
there  has  been  throughout  its  history  the  tendency  and 
persistent  purpose  to  hold  and  secure  in  combination 


136      CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES         iii 

hoth  these  great  blessings.  Of  course  there  are  tracts 
of  history  where  this  demand  of  the  national  conscience 
seems  suspended  or  extinguished  ;  but  it  has  never 
disappeared  for  a  time,  even  under  German  feudalism 
or  despotism,  without  making  itself  felt  in  some  shape, 
and  at  last  reasserting  itself  in  a  more  definite  and 
advanced  form.  It  involves  the  jealous  sense  of  per- 
sonal rights  and  independence  along  with  deference, 
respectful,  and  perhaps  fervently  loyal,  to  authority 
believed  to  be  rightful ;  a  steady  obedience  to  law 
when  law  is  believed  to  be  just,  with  an  equally  steady 
disposition  to  resent  its  injustice.  How  has  this  temper 
been  rooted  in  our  race  ?  The  quick  feehngs  and 
sturdy  wills  of  a  high-spirited  people  will  account  for 
part,  but  not  for  all ;  where  did  they  learn  self-com- 
mand as  well  as  courage,  the  determination  to  be 
patient  as  well  as  inflexible  ?  They  learned  it  in  those 
Christian  ideas  of  man's  individual  importance  and 
corporate  brotherhood  and  fellowship,  those  Christian 
lessons  and  influences,  which  we  see  diffused  through 
the  early  attempts  in  these  races  to  state  principles  of 
government  and  lay  down  rules  of  law.  They  learned 
it  in  the  characteristic  and  memorable  struggles  of  the 
best  and  noblest  of  the  Christian  clergy  against  law- 
lessness and  self-will,  whether  shown  in  the  license  of 
social  manners,  or  in  the  tyranny  of  kings  and  nobles ; 
in  their  stout  assertion  against  power  and  force,  of 
franchises  and  liberties,  which,  though  in  the  first 
instance  the  privileges  of  a  few,  were  the  seeds  of  the 


Ill        CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES       137 

rights  of  all.  We  see  in  the  clergy  a  continued  effort 
to  bring  everything  under  the  sovereignty  of  settled, 
authoritative  law,  circumscribing  individual  caprice, 
fencing  and  guarding  individual  rights  ;  from  them 
the  great  conception  passed  into  the  minds  of  the 
people,  into  the  practice  and  policy — ^in  time  often  the 
wider  and  more  comprehensive  policy  and  practice — 
of  civil  legislators  and  administrators.  The  interpret- 
ation of  the  great  Christian  precepts  connecting  social 
life  and  duties  with  the  deepest  religious  thought 
passed  into  the  sphere  of  political  principles  and  order  : 
"  to  Csesar  the  things  that  are  Csesar's  "  ; — "  let  every 
soul  be  subject  to  the  higher  powers  "  ; — "  as  free,  yet 
not  using  your  liberty  for  a  cloke  of  maliciousness  "  ; 
"  God  hath  set  the  members  in  the  body  as  it  hath 
pleased  Him  .  .  .  and  the  eye  cannot  say  to  the  hand, 
I  have  no  need  of  thee  ;  nor  again  the  head  to  the 
feet,  I  have  no  need  of  you."  These  and  such  like 
great  rules  of  order  and  freedom,  coupled  with  the 
tremendous  words  of  the  Psalms  and  Prophets  against 
oppression  and  the  pride  of  greatness,  found  sympa- 
thetic response  in  Teutonic  minds  and  germinated  in 
them  into  traditions  and  philosophical  doctrines,  the 
real  root  of  which  may  be  forgotten,  but  which  indeed 
come  down  from  the  Christian  education  of  the  bar- 
barian tribes,  and  to  the  attempts  of  their  teachers  to 
bring  out  the  high  meaning  of  the  Christian  teaching 
about  what  is  due  from  man  to  man  in  the  various 
relations  of  society.     Be   it   so,  that  these  attempts 


138       CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES         iii 

were  one-sided  and  crude  ones,  that  the  struggles  to 
seize  this  meaning  were  often  baffled.  But  all  history 
is  the  record  of  imperfect  and  unrealised  ideas ;  and 
nothing  is  more  unphilosophical  or  more  unjust  than 
to  forget  the  place  and  importance  which  such  attempts 
had  in  their  time,  and  in  the  scale  of  improvement. 
We  criticise  the  immature  and  narrow  attempts  of  the 
ecclesiastical  champions  of  law.  Let  us  not  forget 
that  they  were  made  at  a  time  when,  but  for  them, 
the  ideas  both  of  law  and  of  liberty  would  have 
perished. 

And  one  more  debt  our  race  owes  to  Christianity 
— the  value  and  love  which  it  has  infused  into  us  for 
a  pure  and  affectionate  and  peaceful  home.  Not  that 
domestic  life  does  not  often  show  itself  among  the 
Latin  races  in  very  simple  and  charming  forms.  But 
Home  is  specially  Teutonic,  word  and  thing.  Teutonic 
sentiment,  we  know,  from  very  early  times,  was  proud, 
elevated,  even  austere,  in  regard  to  the  family  and  the 
relations  of  the  sexes.  This  nobleness  of  heathenism, 
Christianity  consecrated  and  transformed  into  all  the 
beautiful  shapes  of  household  piety,  household  affection, 
household  purity.  The  life  of  Home  has  become  the 
great  possession,  the  great  delight,  the  great  social 
achievement  of  our  race  ;  its  refuge  from  the  storms 
and  darkness  without,  an  ample  compensation  to  us 
for  so  much  that  we  want  of  the  social  brilliancy  and 
enjoyment  of  our  Latin  brethren.  Eeverence  for  the 
household  and  for  household  life,  a  high  sense  of  its 


Ill         CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES       139 

duties,  a  keen  relish  for  its  pleasures,  this  has  been  a 
strength  to  German  society  amid  much  to  unsettle  it. 
The  absence  of  this  taste  for  the  quiet  and  unexcited 
life  of  home  is  a  formidable  symptom  in  portions  of 
our  race  across  the  Atlantic.  And  when  home  life, 
with  its  sanctities,  its  simphcity,  its  calm  and  deep 
joys  and  sorrows,  ceases  to  have  its  charm  for  us  in 
England,  the  greatest  break  -  up  and  catastrophe  in 
English  history  will  not  be  far  off. 

And  now  to  end.  I  have  endeavoured  to  point  out 
how  those  great  groups  of  common  qualities  which  we 
call  national  character  have  been  in  certain  leading 
instances  profoundly  and  permanently  affected  by 
Christianity.  Christianity  addresses  itself  primarily 
and  directly  to  individuals.  In  its  proper  action,  its 
purpose  and  its  business  is  to  make  men  saints  ;  what 
it  has  to  do  with  souls  is  far  other,  both  in  its  discip- 
line and  its  scope,  from  what  it  has  to  do  with  nations 
or  societies.  Further,  its  effect  on  national  character- 
istics must  be  consequent  on  its  effect  on  individuals ; 
an  effluence  from  the  separate  persons  whom  it  has 
made  its  own,  the  outer  undulations  from  centres  of 
movement  and  tendency  in  single  hearts  and  con- 
sciences. Of  course  such  effects  are  quite  distinct; 
they  differ  in  motive,  in  intensity,  in  shape,  and  form. 
What  is  immediate  and  full  in  the  one  case  is  second- 
ary and  imperfect  in  the  other,  largely  mixed  and 
diluted  with  qualifying,  perhaps  hostile,  influences. 
But  nations   really  have  their  fortunes   and  history 


I40      CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES        in 

independently  of  the  separate  individuals  composing 
them ;  they  have  their  faults,  their  virtues,  their 
crimes,  their  fate ;  and  so  in  this  broad,  loose,  and  yet 
not  unreal  way,  they  have  their  characters.  Christi- 
anity, which  spoke  at  first  to  men  one  by  one,  went 
forth  a  high  Imperial  power,  into  the  "  wilderness  of 
the  people,"  and  impressed  itself  on  nations.  Christi- 
anity, by  its  public  language  and  public  efforts,  made 
man  infinitely  more  interesting  to  man  than  ever  he 
was  before.  Doubtless,  the  impression  was  much  more 
imperfect,  inconsistent,  equivocal,  than  in  the  case  of 
individuals.  But  for  all  that,  the  impression,  within 
its  own  conditions  and  limits,  was  real,  was  strong, 
was  lasting.  Further — and  this  is  my  special  point 
now, — it  was  of  great  importance.  National  character 
is  indeed  a  thing  of  time,  shown  on  the  stage  of  this 
earthly  and  transitory  scene,  adapted  to  it  and  par- 
taking of  its  incompleteness.  The  interests,  the  perfec- 
tion of  souls,  are  of  another  order.  But  nothing  can  be 
unimportant  which  affects  in  any  way  the  improve- 
ment, the  happiness,  the  increased  hopes  of  man,  in 
any  stage  of  his  being.  And  nations  and  societies, 
with  their  dominant  and  distinguishing  qualities,  are 
the  ground  on  which  souls  grow  up,  and  have  their 
better  or  worse  chance,  as  we  speak,  for  the  higher 
discipline  of  inward  religion.  It  is  all-important  how 
habits  receive  their  bias,  how  the  controlling  and  often 
imperious  rules  of  life  are  framed ;  with  what  moral 
assumptions   men   start  in  their  course.      It  is  very 


Ill         CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES       141 

important  to  us,  as  individuals,  whether  or  not  we 
grow  up  in  a  society  where  polygamy  and  slavery  are 
impossible,  where  veracity  is  exacted,  where  duelling 
is  discountenanced,  where  freedom,  honour,  chastity, 
readiness  for  effort  and  work,  are  treated  as  matters 
of  course  in  those  with  whom  we  live. 

We  have  seen  that  Christianity  is  very  different  in 
its  influence  on  different  national  characters.  It  has 
wrought  with  nations  as  with  men.  For  it  does  not 
merely  gain  their  adherence,  but  within  definite  limits 
it  develops  differences  of  temperament  and  mind. 
Human  nature  has  many  sides,  and  under  the  power- 
ful and  fruitful  influence  of  Christianity  these  sides 
are  brought  out  in  varying  proportions.  Unlike 
Mahometanism,  which  seems  to  produce  a  singularly 
uniform  monotony  of  character  in  races,  however 
naturally  different,  on  which  it  gets  a  hold,  Christi- 
anity has  been  in  its  results,  viewed  on  a  large  scale, 
as  singularly  diversified  —  not  only  diversified,  but 
incomplete.  It  has  succeeded,  and  it  has  failed.  For 
it  has  aimed  much  higher,  it  has  demanded  much 
more,  it  has  had  to  reckon  with  far  more  subtle  and 
complicated  obstacles.  If  it  had  mastered  its  special 
provinces  of  human  society  as  Mahometanism  has 
mastered  Arabs  and  Turks,  the  world  would  be  very 
different  from  what  it  is.  Yes ;  it  has  fallen  far  short 
of  that  completeness.  The  fruits  of  its  power  and 
discipline  have  been  partial.  It  is  open  to  any  one, 
and   easy  enough,  to  point   out  the  shortcomings  of 


142       CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES        III 

saints ;  and,  much  more,  the  faults  and  vices  of 
Christian  nations.  But  the  lesson  of  history,  I  think, 
is  this :  not  that  all  the  good  which  might  have  been 
hoped  for  to  society  has  followed  from  the  appearance 
of  Christian  rehgion  in  the  forefront  of  human  life ; 
not  that  in  this  wilful  and  blundering  world,  so 
full  of  misused  gifts  and  wasted  opportunities  and 
disappointed  promise,  mistake  and  mischief  have 
never  been  in  its  train ;  not  that  in  the  nations 
where  it  has  gained  a  footing  it  has  mastered  their 
besetting  sins,  the  falsehood  of  one,  the  ferocity  of 
another,  the  characteristic  sensuahty,  the  characteristic 
arrogance  of  others.  But  history  teaches  us  this : 
that  in  tracing  back  the  course  of  human  improve- 
ment we  come,  in  one  case  after  another,  upon  Chris- 
tianity as  the  source  from  wliich  improvement  derived 
its  principle  and  its  motive ;  we  find  no  other  source 
adequate  to  account  for  the  new  spring  of  amend- 
ment ;  and,  without  it,  no  other  sources  of  good  could 
have  been  relied  upon.  It  was  not  only  the  strongest 
element  of  salutary  change,  but  one  without  which 
others  would  have  had  no  chance.  And,  in  the  next 
place,  the  least  and  most  imperfect  instance  of  what 
it  has  done  has  this  unique  quality — that  Christianity 
carries  within  it  a  self-correcting  power,  ready  to  act 
whenever  the  will  arrives  to  use  this  power ;  that  it 
suggests  improvement,  and  furnishes  materials  for  a 
further  step  to  it.  What  it  has  done  anywhere,  what 
it  has  done  where  it  has  done  most,  leaves  much  to 


Ill        CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  TEUTONIC  RACES       143 

do  ;  but  everywhere  it  leaves  the  ground  gained  on 
which  to  do  it,  and  the  ideas  to  guide  the  reformer  in 
doing  it.  We  should  be  cowards  to  think  that  those 
mighty  and  beneficent  powers  which  won  this  ground 
for  us,  and  produced  these  ideas  in  dark  and  very 
unhappy  times,  cannot  in  our  happier  days  accomplish 
even  more.  Those  ancient  and  far-distant  ages,  which 
have  been  occupying  our  attention  here  for  a  little 
while,  amid  the  pressure  and  strain  of  our  busy 
present,  we  may,  we  ought,  to  leave  far  behind,  in 
what  we  hope  to  achieve.  But  in  our  eagerness  for 
improvement,  it  concerns  us  to  be  on  our  guard 
against  the  temptation  of  thinking  that  we  can  have 
the  fruit  or  the  flower  and  yet  destroy  the  root ;  that 
we  may  retain  the  high  view  of  human  nature  which 
has  grown  with  the  growth  of  Christian  nations,  and 
discard  that  revelation  of  Divine  love  and  human 
destiny  of  which  that  view  forms  a  part  or  a  conse- 
quence ;  that  we  may  retain  the  moral  energy,  and 
yet  make  light  of  the  faith  that  produced  it.  It 
concerns  us  to  remember,  amid  the  splendours  and 
vastness  of  a  nature,  and  of  a  social  state,  which  to 
uSj  as  individuals,  are  both  so  transitory,  that  first  and 
above  everything  we  are  moral  and  religious  beings, 
trusted  with  will,  made  for  immortality.  It  concerns 
us  that  we  do  not  despise  our  birthright,  and  cast 
away  our  heritage  of  gifts  and  of  powers,  which  we 
may  lose,  but  not  recover. 


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Angeles  Express. 

Campbell  —  The  New  Theology.     By  R.  J.  Campbell. 

"  A  fine  contribution  to  the  better  thought  of  our  times  written  in 
the  spirit  of  the  Master."  —  St.  Paul  Dispatch. 

Clark  — The  Care  of  a  House.     By  T.  M.  Clark. 

"  If  the  average  man  knew  one-ninth  of  what  Mr.  Clark  tells  him 
in  this  book,  he  would  be  able  to  save  money  every  year  on  repairs, 
etc."  —  Chicago  Tribune. 

3 


Conyngton  —  How  to  Help:  A  Manual  of  Practical  Charity.     By 

Mary  Conyngton. 
"  An  exceedingly  comprehensive  work  with  chapters  on  the  home- 
less man  and  woman,  care  of  needy  families,  and  the  discussions  of 
the  problems  of  child  labor." 

Coolidge  —  The  United  States  as  a  World  Power.     By  Archibald 
Gary  Coolidge. 
"  A   work   of  real   distinction  .  .  .  which   moves  the  reader  to 
thought."  —  The  Nation. 

Croly  —  The  Promise  of  American  Life.     By  Herbert  Croly. 

"  The  most  profomid  and  illuminating  study  of  our  national  conditions 
which  has  appeared  in  many  years."  —  Theodore  Roosevelt. 

Devine  —  Misery  and  Its  Causes.     By  Edward  T.  Devine. 

"  One  rarely  comes  across  a  book  so  rich  in  every  page,  yet  so 
sound,  so  logical,  and  thorough."  —  Chicago  Tribune. 

Earle  —  Home  Life  in  Colonial  Days.     By  Alice  Morse  Earle. 
"  A  book  which  throws  new  light  on  our  early  history." 

Ely  —  Evolution  of  Industrial  Society.     By  Richard  T.  Ely. 

"  The  benefit  of  competition  and  the  improvement  of  the  race, 
municipal  ownership,  and  concentration  of  wealth  are  treated  in  a 
sane,  helpful,  and  interesting  manner."  —  Philadelphia  Telegraph. 

Ely  —  Monopolies  and  Trusts.     By  Richard  T.  Ely. 

"  The  evils  of  monopoly  are  plainly  stated,  and  remedies  are  pro- 
posed. This  book  should  be  a  help  to  every  man  in  active  business 
life."  —  Baltimore  Stin. 

French  —  How  to  Grow  Vegetables.     By  Allen  French. 

"  Particularly  valuable  to  a  beginner  in  vegetable  gardening,  giving 
not  only  a  convenient  and  reliable  planting-table,  but  giving  particu- 
lar attention  to  the  culture  of  the  vegetables."  —  Suburban  Life. 

Goodyear  —  Renaissance  and  Modem  Art.     W.  H.  Goodyear. 
"  A  thorough  and  scholarly  interpretation  of  artistic  development." 

Hapgood  —  Abraham  Lincoln :  The  Man  of  the  People.     By  Norman 
Hapgood. 
"  A  life  of  Lincoln  that  has  never  been  surpassed  in  vividness, 
compactness,  and  homelike  reality."  —  Chicago  Tribune. 

Hatdtain  —  The  Mystery  of  Golf.     By  Arnold  Haultain. 

"  It  is  more  than  a  golf  book.  There  is  interwoven  with  it  a  play 
of  mild  philosophy  and  of  pointed  wit."  —  Boston  Globe. 

4 


Hearn — Japan:  An  Attempt  at  Interpretation.  By  Lafcadio 
Hearn. 
"  A  thousand  books  have  been  written  about  Japan,  but  this  one 
is  one  of  the  rarely  precious  volumes  which  opens  the  door  to  an 
intimate  acquaintance  with  the  wonderful  people  who  command  the 
attention  of  the  world  to-day."  —  Boston  Herald. 

Hillis  —  The   Quest  of  Happiness.     By   Rev.   Newell   Dwight 

HiLLIS. 

"  Its  whole  tone  and  spirit  is  of  a  sane,  healthy  optimism." —  Phila- 
delphia Telegraph. 

Hillquit  —  Socialism  in  Theory  and  Practice.    By  Morris  Hillquit. 
"  An  interesting  historical  sketch  of  the  movement."  —  Newark 

Evening  News. 

Hodges  —  Everyman's  Religion.     By  George  Hodges. 

"  Religion  to-day  is  preeminently  ethical  and  social,  and  such  is 
the  religion  so  ably  and  attractively  set  forth  in  these  pages."  — 
Boston  Herald. 

Home  —  David  Livingstone.     By  Silvester  C.  Horne. 

The  centenary  edition  of  this  popular  work.  A  clear,  simple, 
narrative  biography  of  the  great  missionary,  explorer,  and  scientist. 

Hunter  —  Poverty.     By  Robert  Hunter. 

"  Mr.  Hunter's  book  is  at  once  sympathetic  and  scientific.  He 
brings  to  the  task  a  store  of  practical  experience  in  settlement  work 
gathered  in  many  parts  of  the  country."  —  Boston  Transcript. 

Hunter  —  Socialists  at  Work.     By  Robert  Hunter. 

"  A  vivid,  running  characterization  of  the  foremost  personalities 
in  the  Socialist  movement  throughout  the  world."  —  Review  of 
Reviews. 

Jefferson — The  Building  of  the  Church.    By  Charles  E.  Jefferson. 
"  A  book  that  should  be  read  by  every  minister." 

King  —  The  Ethics  of  Jesus.     By  Henry  Churchill  King. 

"  I  know  no  other  study  of  the  ethical  teaching  of  Jesus  so  scholarly? 
so  careful,  clear,  and  compact  as  this."  —  G.  H.  Palmer,  Harvard 
University. 

King  —  The    Laws    of    Friendship  —  Human    and    Divine.     By 

Henry  Churchill  King. 
"  This  book  is  full  of   sermon  themes  and  thought-inspiring  sen- 
tences  worthy   of   being   made   mottoes   for   conduct."  —  Chicago 
Tribune. 

5 


King  —  Rational  Living.     By  Henry  Churchill  King. 

^ "  An  able  conspectus  of  modern  psychological  investigation, 
viewed  from  the  Christian  standpoint."  —  Philadelphia  Public 
Ledger. 

London  —  The  War  of  the  Classes.     By  Jack  London. 

"  Mr.  London's  book  is  thoroughly  interesting,  and  his  point  of 
view  is  very  different  from  that  of  the  closest  theorist."  —  Springfield 
Republican. 

London  —  Revolution  and  Other  Essays.     By  Jack  London. 
"  Vigorous,  socialistic  essays,  animating  and  insistent." 

Lyon  —  How  to  Keep  Bees  for  Profit.     By  Everett  D.  Lyon. 

*'  A  book  which  gives  an  insight  into  the  life  history  of  the  bee 
family,  as  well  as  telling  the  novice  how  to  start  an  apiary  and  care 
for  it."  —  Country  Life  in  America. 

McLennan — A  Manual  of  Practical  Farming.    By  John  McLennan. 
"  The  author  has  placed  before  the  reader  in  the  simplest  terms  a 
means    of    assistance   in    the    ordinary   problems    of   farming."  — 
National  Nurseryman. 

Mabie  —  William  Shakespeare:  Poet,  Dramatist,  and  Man.     By 
Hamilton  W.  Mabie. 
"  It  is  rather  an  interpretation  than  a  record." —  Chicago  Standard. 

Mahaffy  —  Rambles  and  Studies  in  Greece.     By  J.  P.  Mahaffy. 

"  To  the  intelligent  traveler  and  lover  of  Greece  this  volume  will 
prove  a  most  sympathetic  guide  and  companion." 

Mathews  —  The  Church  and  the  Changing  Order.     By  Shailer 
Mathews. 
"  The  book  throughout  is  characterized  by  good  sense  and  restraint 
...     A  notable  book  and  one  that  every  Christian  may  read  with 
profit."  —  The  Living  Church. 

Mathews  —  The    Gospel    and   the    Modem    Man.     By    Shailer 

Mathews. 

"  A  succinct  statement  of  the  essentials  of  the  New  Testament." 
—  Service. 

Nearing  —  Wages  in  the  United  States.     By  Scott  Nearing. 

"  The  book  is  valuable  for  anybody  interested  in  the  main  question 
of  the  day —  the  labor  question." 

Patten  —  The  Social  Basis  of  Religion.     By  Simon  N.  Patten. 
"  A  work  of  substantial  value."  —  Continent. 

6 


Peabody  —  The  Approach  to  the  Social  Question.     By  Francis 
Greenwood  Peabody. 
"  This  book  is  at  once  the  most  delightful,  persuasive,  and  saga- 
cious contribution  to  the  subject."  —  Louisville  Courier- Journal. 

Pierce  —  The  Tariff  and  the  Trusts.     By  Franklin  Pierce. 

"  An  excellent  campaign  document  for  a  non-protectionist."  — 

Independent. 

Rauschenbusch  —  Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis.     By  Walter 

Rauschenbusch. 
"  It  is  a  book  to  like,  to  learn  from,  and  to  be  charmed  with."  — 
New   York  Times. 

Riis  —  The  Making  of  an  American.     By  Jacob  Riis. 

"  Its  romance  and  vivid  incident  make  it  as  varied  and  delightful 
as  any  romance."  —  Publisher's  Weekly. 

Riis  —  Theodore  Roosevelt,  the  Citizen.     By  Jacob  Riis. 

"  A  refreshing  and  stimulating  picture."  —  New   York  Tribune. 

Ryan  —  A  Living  Wage;  Its  Ethical  and  Economic  Aspects.     By 
Rev.  J.  A.  Ryan. 
"  The  most  judicious  and  balanced  discussion  at  the  disposal  of  the 
general  reader."  —  World  To-day. 

Scott  —  Increasing  Human  Efficiency  in  Business.     By  Walter 

Dill  Scott. 
"  An  important  contribution  to  the  literature  of  business  psy- 
chology."—  The  American  Banker. 

St.  Maur  —  The  Earth's  Bounty.     By  Kate  V.  St.  Maur. 
"  Practical  ideas  about  the  farm  and  garden." 

St.  Maur  —  A  Self-supporting  Home.     By  Kate  V.  St.  Maur. 

"  Each  chapter  is  the  detailed  account  of  all  the  work  necessary 
for  one  month  —  in  the  vegetable  garden,  among  the  small  fruits, 
with  the  fowls,  guineas,  rabbits,  and  in  every  branch  of  husbandry 
to  be  met  with  on  the  small  farm."  —  Louisville  Courier-Journal. 

Sherman  —  What  is  Shakespeare?     By  L.  A.  Sherman. 

"  Emphatically  a  work  without  which  the  library  of  the  Shake- 
speare student  will  be  incomplete."  —  Daily  Telegram. 

Sidgwick  —  Home  Life  in  Germany.     By  A.  Sidgwick. 

"  A  vivid  picture  of  social  life  and  customs  in  Germany  to-day." 

Simons  —  Social  Forces  in  American  History.     By  A.  W.  Simons. 
"  A  forceful  interpretation  of  events  in  the  light  of  economics." 

7 


Smith  —  The  Spirit  of  American  Govermnent.     By  J.  Allen  Smith. 
"  Not  since  Bryce's  '  American  Commonwealth  '  has  a  book  been 
produced  which  deals  so  searchingly  with  American  political  in- 
stitutions and  their  history."  —  New    York  Evening  Telegram. 

Spargo  —  Socialism.     By  John  Spargo. 

"  One  of  the  ablest  expositions  of  Socialism  that  has  ever  been 
written."  —  New  York  Evening  Call. 

Tarbell  —  History  of  Greek  Art.     By  T.  B.  Tarbell. 

"  A  sympathetic  and  understanding  conception  of  the  golden  age 
of  art." 

Trask  —  In  the  Vanguard.     By  Katrina  Trask. 

"  Katrina  Trask  has  written  a  book  —  in  many  respects  a  won- 
derful book  —  a  story  that  should  take  its  place  among  the  classics." 
—  Brooklyn  Daily  Eagle. 

Valentine  -  How  to  Keep  Hens  for  Profit.     By  C.  S.  Valentine. 

"  Beginners  and  seasoned  poultrymen  will  find  in  it  much  of 
value."  —  Chicago  Tribune. 

Van  Dyke  —  The  Gospel  for  a  World  of  Sin.     By   Henry  Van 

Dyke. 

"  One  of  the  basic  books  of  true  Christian  thought  of  to-day  and  of 
all  times."  —  Boston  Courier. 

Van  Dyke  —  The  Spirit  of  America.     By  Henry  Van  Dyke. 

"  Undoubtedly  the  most  notable  interpretation  in  years  of  the  real 
America.  It  compares  favorably  with  Bryce's  '  American  Com- 
monwealth.' "  —  Philadelphia  Press. 

Veblen  —  The  Theory  of  the  Leisure  Class.     By  Thorstein  B. 

Veblen. 
"  The  most  valuable  recent  contribution  to  the  elucidation  of  this 
subject."  —  London  Times. 

Vedder  —  Socialism   and   the   Ethics   of    Jesus.     By    Henry    C. 

Vedder. 
"  A  timely  discussion  of  a  popular  theme."  —  New   York  Post. 

Walling  —  Socialism  as  it  Is.    By  William  English  Walling. 

"...  the  best  book  on  Socialism  by  any  American,  if  not  the  best 
book  on  Socialism  in  the  English  language."  —  Boston  Herald. 

Wells  —  New  Worlds  for  Old.     By  H.  G.  Wells. 

"  As  a  presentation  of  Socialistic  thought  as  it  is  working  to-day, 
this  is  the  most  judicious  and  balanced  discussion  at  the  disposal  of 
the  general  reader."  —  World  To-day. 

8 


"Weyl  —  The  New  Democracy,     By  Walter  E.  Weyl, 

"  The  best  and  most  comprehensive  survey  of  the  general  social 
and  political  status  and  prospects  that  has  been  published  of   late 

years." 

White  —  The  Old  Order  Changeth.     By  William  Allen  White. 

"  The  present  status  of  society  in  America.  An  excellent  antidote 
to  the  pessimism  of  modern  writers  on  our  social  system."  — 
Baltimore  Sun. 


AN   IMPORTANT    ADDITION    TO    THE    MACMILLAN 
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edition  has  been  collated  with  this  set,  and  many  inaccuracies,  some 
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Allen  —  A  Kentucky  Cardinal.     By  James  Lane  Allen. 

"  A  narrative,  told  with  naive  simplicity,  of  how  a  man  who  was 
devoted  to  his  fruits  and  flowers  and  birds  came  to  fall  in  love  with  a 
fair  neighbor."  —  New   York  Tribune. 

Allen  —  The  Reign  of  Law.    A  Tale  of  the  Kentucky  Hempfields. 

By  James  Lane  Allen. 
**  Mr.  Allen  has  style  as  original  and  almost  as  perfectly  finished  as 
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many  novels  of  the  period."  —  San  Francisco  Chronicle. 

Atherton  —  Patience  Sparhawk.     By  Gertrude  Atherton. 

"  One  of  the  most  interesting  works  of  the  foremost  American 
novelist." 

Chad  —  Jim  Hands.     By  Richard  Washburn  Child. 

"  A  big,  simple,  leisurely  moving  chronicle  of  life.  Commands  the 
profoundest  respect  and  admiration.  Jim  is  a  real  man,  sound  and 
fine."  —  Daily  News. 

Crawford  —  The  Heart  of  Rome.     By  Marion  Crawford. 
"  A  story  of  underground  mystery." 

Crawford  —  Fair  Margaret:  A  Portrait.     By  Marion  Crawford. 

"  A  story  of  modern  life  in  Italy,  visualizing  the  country  and  its 
people,  and  warm  with  the  red  blood  of  romance  and  melodrama."  — 
Boston  Transcript. 

Davis  —  A  Friend  of  Caesar.     By  William  Stearns  Davis. 

"  There  are  many  incidents  so  vivid,  so  brilliant,  that  they  fix  them- 
selves in  the  memory."  —  Nancy  Huston  Banks  in  The  Bookman. 

Drummond  —  The  Justice  of  the  King.     By  Hamilton  Drummond. 
**  Read  the  story  for  the  sake  of  the  living,  breathing  people,  the 
adventures,  but  most  for  the  sake  of  the  boy  who  served  love  and  the 
King."  —  Chicago  Record-Herald. 

lO 


Elizabeth  and  Her  Gennan  Garden. 

"  It  is  full  of  nature  in  many  phases  —  of  breeze  and  sunshine,  of 
the  glory  of  the  land,  and  the  sheer  joy  of  living." —  New  York 
Times. 

Gale  —  Loves  of  Pelleas  and  Etarre.     By  Zona  Gale. 

"  .  .  .  full  of  fresh  feeling  and  grace  of  style,  a  draught  from  the 
fountain  of  youth."  —  Outlook. 

Herrick  —  The  Common  Lot.     By  Robert  Herrick. 

"  A  story  of  present-day  life,  intensely  real  in  its  picture  of  a  young 
architect  whose  ideals  in  the  beginning  were,  at  their  highest,  aesthetic 
rather  than  spiritual.     It  is  an  unusual  novel  of  great  interest." 

London  —  Adventure.     By  Jack  London. 

"  No  reader  of  Jack  London's  stories  need  be  told  that  this  abounds 
with  romantic  and  dramatic  incident."  —  Los  Angeles  Tribune. 

London  —  Burning  Daylight.     By  Jack  London. 

"  Jack  London  has  outdone  himself  in  *  Burning  Daylight.'  "  — 

The  Springfield  Union. 

Loti  —  Disenchanted.     By  Pierre  Loti. 

"  It  gives  a  more  graphic  picture  of  the  life  of  the  rich  Turkish 
women  of  to-day  than  anything  that  has  ever  been  written."  — 
Brooklyn  Daily  Eagle. 

Lucas  —  Mr.  Ingleside.     By  E.  V.  Lucas. 

"  He  displays  himself  as  an  intellectual  and  amusing  observer  of 
life's  foibles  with  a  hero  characterized  by  inimitable  kindness  and 
humor."  —  The  Independent. 

Mason  —  The  Four  Feathers.     By  A.  E.  W.  Mason. 

"  '  The  Four  Feathers  '  is  a  first-rate  story,  with  more  legitimate 
thrills  than  any  novel  we  have  read  in  a  long  time."  —  New  York 
Press. 

Norris  —  Mother.     By  Kathleen  Norris. 

"  Worth  its  weight  in  gold."  —  Catholic  Columbian. 

Oxenham  —  The  Long  Road.     By  John  Oxenham. 

"  '  The  Long  Road  '  is  a  tragic,  heart-gripping  story  of  Russian 
political  and  social  conditions."  —  The  Craftsman. 

Pryor  —  The  Colonel's  Story.     By  Mrs.  Roger  A.  Pryor. 

"  The  story  is  one  in  which  the  spirit  of  the  Old  South  figures 
largely;  adventure  and  romance  have  their  play  and  carry  the  plot 
to  a  satisfying  end." 

II 


Remington  —  Ermine  of  the  Yellowstone.     By  John  Remington. 

"  A  very  original  and  remarkable  novel  wonderful  in  its  vigor  and 
freshness." 

Roberts  —  Kings  in  Exile.     By  Charles  G.  D.  Roberts. 

"  The  author  catches  the  spirit  of  forest  and  sea  life,  and  the  reader 
comes  to  have  a  personal  love  and  knowledge  of  our  animal  friends." 
—  Boston  Globe. 

Robins  —  The  Convert.     By  Elizabeth  Robins. 

"  *  The  Convert  '  devotes  itself  to  the  exploitation  of  the  recent 
suffragist  movement  in  England.  It  is  a  book  not  easily  forgotten 
by  any  thoughtful  reader."  —  Chicago  Evening  Post. 

Robins  —  A  Dark  Lantern.     By  Elizabeth  Robins. 

A  powerful  and  striking  novel,  English  in  scene,  which  takes  an 
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Ward — The  History  of  David  Grieve.    By  Mrs.  Humphrey  Ward. 
^ "  A  perfect  picture  of  life,  remarkable  for  its  humor  and  extraor- 
dinary success  at  character  analysis." 


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Altsheler  —  The  Horsemen  of  the  Plains.     By  Joseph  A.  Alt- 
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"  A  story  of  the  West,  of  Indians,  of  scouts,  trappers,  fur  traders, 
and, in  short,  of  everything  that  is  dear  to  the  imagination  of  a  healthy 
American  boy."  —  New   York  Sun. 

Bacon  —  While  Caroline  Was  Growing.     By  Josephine  Daskam 
Bacon. 
"  Only  a  genuine  lover  of  children,  and  a  keenly  sympathetic 
observer  of    human   nature,   could   have   given   us   this  book."  — 
Boston  Herald. 

12 


Carroll  —  Alice's  Adventures,  and  Through  the  Looking  Glass.     By 

Lewis  Carroll. 
*'  One  of.  the  immortal  books  for  children." 

Dix  —  A  Little  Captive  Lad.     By  Marie  Beulah  Dix. 

"  The  human  interest  is  strong,  and  children  are  sure  to  like  it."  — 
Washington   Times. 

Greene  —  Pickett's  Gap.     By  Homer  Greene. 

"  The  story  presents  a  picture  of  truth  and  honor  that  cannot  fail 
to  have  a  vivid  impression  upon  the  reader."  —  Toledo  Blade. 

Lucas  —  Slowcoach.     By  E.  V.  Lucas. 

"  The  record  of  an  English  family's  coaching  tour  in  a  great  old- 
fashioned  wagon.  A  charming  narrative,  as  quaint  and  original  as 
its  name."  —  Booknews  Monthly. 

Mabie  —  Book  of  Christmas.     By  H.  W.  Mabie. 

"  A  beautiful  collection  of  Christmas  verse  and  prose  in  which  all 
the  old  favorites  will  be  found  in  an  artistic  setting."  —  The  St. 
Louis  Mirror. 

Major  —  The  Bears  of  Blue  River.     By  Charles  Major. 
"  An  exciting  story  with  all  the  thrills  the  title  implies.'* 

Major  —  Uncle  Tom  Andy  Bill.     By  Charles  Major. 

"  A  stirring  story  full  of  bears,  Indians,  and  hidden  treasures."  — 
Cleveland  Leader. 

Nesbit  —  The  Railway  Children.     By  E.  Nesbit. 

"  A  delightful  story  revealing  the  author's  intimate  knowledge  of 
juvenile  ways."  —  The  Nation. 

Whyte  —  The  Story  Book  Girls.     By  Christina  G.  Whyte. 

"  A  book  that  all  girls  will  read  with  delight  —  a  sweet,  wholesome 
story  of  girl  life." 

Wright  —  Dream  Fox  Story  Book.     By  Mabel  Osgood  Wright. 

"  The  whole  book  is  delicious  with  its  wise  and  kindly  humor,  its 
just  perspective  of  the  true  value  of  things." 

Wright  —  Aunt  Junmy's  Will.     By  Mabel  Osgood  Wright. 
"  Barbara  has  written  no  more  delightful  book  than  this." 

13 


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